


Leave the Demons in the Dust

by MarvelousMind



Category: Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) RPF
Genre: Art, Badass, Canon Compliant, Complete, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Music, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Science, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-06 13:19:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 55,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1859499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarvelousMind/pseuds/MarvelousMind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam's reclusive vampiric existence is disturbed by a woman who needs his help, she turns out to be more than he expected. A 'zombie' he can't apply the designation to... an equal he can't resist. A muse and a reflection. (Set as a prequel to the film) COMPLETED</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, I know many of you were waiting for an update for Transcendent Fantasy or Loki and Syn but I couldn’t get Adam out of my head right this moment so I had to put this out there (maybe he’ll calm him down and let my other muses speak).
> 
> NOTE: This was written to ‘This Night’ by Black Lab (highly recommend listening to it at the point marked with a §, it’s relevant ;)  
> Spotify link: https://play.spotify.com/track/1iTJWaXWJE03Ek1qWGOfAo  
> or YouTube link http://youtu.be/8cucFfpsqf8

“Don’t you fuckers even think about it!” my bravado was convincing, as usual, but I heard the tremor sneaking into my voice. I wouldn’t be able to keep it up much longer, the situation was hopeless and I knew it… possibly more than they did.

“You do and I’ll knock your pathetic dicks in the dirt. That’d be more action then they’ve seen in years I bet”. Baiting them was dangerous, but I knew they’d waste time scoffing at my hasty insults, and I needed that time to find a way out of this.

They were bearing down on me as one, spreading out as they came around the yawning trunk of my useless car and slowing to a cautious, stalking pace as they came closer. I gave ground, slowly, casually keeping them just beyond striking distance.

Like wolves that had caught a sent, they’d picked up on the tremor in my voice and taken my movement for an attempt at retreat. The cold dingy overhead glow of a lone functioning streetlamp cast them into menacing half shadows as self-satisfied sneers spread over their faces, but my insults worked. Their pace slowed and a gibe answer issued from my left.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself Lil, I know you got issues, but I wouldn’t call you dirt, pretty girl.”

I barely registered Randy’s taunt as I glanced over my right shoulder, pretending to look back for the curb but throwing my sight line wide, taking in the abandoned houses behind me. In the row of crumbling, dark, and lifeless facades I caught sight of something that I’d had no real hope of finding.

Movement.

A curtain had shifted, the light of a room swallowed behind it.

I wasn’t alone.

Jimmy spoke up, his voice low and gruff “We’re still gonna be buried in you before the night is over…” I knew it was a cue, there were too many of them for fear to make them hesitate long. I got the jump on them anyway.

Before they made their move I bolted, running as fast as I could for the house down the street, the green and red brick Victorian where the curtain had shifted.

I reached the porch and pounded my hands against the door, screaming for help at the top of my lungs. The din of thudding footsteps caught up to me quickly, slowing and whispering through the tall grass as they drew closer before halting directly behind me. I slid my open palms down the smooth glass of the door before closing them into fists. My eyes clenched shut for a moment, regret for what was to come already hot in my veins, then a deep breath, to let go of this distraction and focus.

I set my face into a mask of fierce haughtiness as I turned to face them; I only had two advantages left against the four men closing in on me, and projecting confidence was one of them. It was immediately apparent this was only working on two of them, their eyes shifting nervously to the others.

One on one? I could probably take any of them, and they knew it. My step-father had made sure I could handle myself.

Two on one? If either of them managed to get a good grip on me, things could get really ugly, but maybe still salvageable.

Four on one? I was screwed. Probably literally. I forced myself not to think about that, fear was not my friend right now.

Especially since I’d fed their power trip by screaming and pounding on the door, they’d smelled my fear, and were feeding on it like predators they were.

I took another deep breath and prepared to show them I was no prey. If this was going to happen I was going down fighting to my last breath, and I was bringing all of them with me, kicking and screaming into Hell if that’s what it took.

They weren’t sure what to expect from me, so they waited, their faces leering at me in the faint light, backlit by the wane streetlight, their pretentious faux leather jackets over t-shirts blaring the logos of bands too far past for anything but reprints too be so vivid in moonlight, bands they claimed to worship, though they knew little about them. They pretended to be coinsures, to have talent, but they were all of them posers. They pretended to follow the music because it made them look cool, because ‘chicks dig musicians’, but they didn’t get it. Not really.

My brief collaboration with Jack White had gotten me some recognition; recognition hadn’t turned out to be what I’d thought it was. So far all it had culminated in was getting me here, alone in the dark with these fuckwads.

Randy tensed and took a step forward and I dropped my center of gravity as they cornered me, running wasn’t an option anymore so I adopting a fighting stance. They laughed as if I were nothing more than one of those silly cat videos they wasted hours watching on The Vine. They wouldn’t have laughed if they’d known about the switchblade I’d subtly opened when I’d turned around. I held it ready and hidden behind my left thigh.

Suddenly lights flared on, illuminating the scene before me, a brighter swath of light falling over their startled thug faces as the door behind me clicked open. There was little one person could do to help me in this wasteland, unless they happened to have a gun. I fought the urge to turn around and look. They had to have a gun, opening the door in this situation was unthinkable without a gun...

I watched the feral grin spread over Randy’s face.

No gun.

Guilt washed over me for dragging someone else into my dilemma, someone clearly unable to handle it if they were naive enough to open the door unarmed. There was probably some little old lady behind me, too stubborn to move out of the neighborhood when everyone else had.

Then everything changed. My eyes were still locked onto Randy and his minions as a pale arm quickly snaked around my waist, drawing me into the house with bruising force.

There was only a brief second to enjoy the stark terror on their faces before the door slammed shut, right in front of my nose. Several locks and deadbolts were turned in lightning quick procession. After a beat, I wondered what was behind me that had put that expression on their faces. I heard a deep inhale as the strong sinuous hand slid away from my waist, and then… I really did feel like prey.

He was definitely masculine. Tall. And breathing nearly as hard as I was, right against my neck. My hair stirring with every breath he took. A chill ran up my spine, followed by a strong urge to run. He sighed “Fucking zombie kids” his voice a low and smoothly deep baritone.

It was more irritation than threat, and I reminded myself that I was safer here than I was outside. All the same, I turned slowly, careful not to broadcast my fear to my rescuer.

He was tall, with wildly unkept hair around a face carven by masters of human artistry. His wide eyes had a dark quality, almost frightening in their intensity. He was sinuously muscled, clad only in dark jeans, but cloaked an air of sensitive melancholy and unnatural ferocity in equal measure.

He should have been terrifying, and yet I was completely intrigued. I admit I do have a love affair with mystery, even when it’s hazardous to my health. Curiosity may have bruised this cat, but it hasn’t killed me… yet.

I made a casual show of flipping the blade back into its casing and slipping it into my pocket… just in case.

He wasn’t impressed.

In fact he looked at me disdainfully and repeated “fucking zombies” before he turned and walked down the hall, proceeding up some stairs. I glanced back at the glass, reinforced with wire mesh, and listened to the curses and retreating footsteps of Randy and his minions.

After a few echoing thuds, no doubt injuries to my own car as they stole everything they could reach from the open trunk, their ignition turned over and their tires burned out as they departed.

Was it a trick? Would someone jump me if I stepped out of this odd house. It seemed a moot point, my ’59 Oldsmobile was out of gas and Randy had smashed my cell phone when everything started going south.

I was stuck in a weird house, with a weirdly beautiful man, in the middle of an abandoned suburban wasteland. The haunting cry of a coyote issued nearby.

I followed him upstairs.

The floors were ancient and dirty, the walls peppered with holes, and clutter was piled on every conceivable surface. A piano lay buried in it at the foot of the stairs “Lived here long?”

He paused at the landing, shoulders drooping as another exasperated sigh left him. He didn’t turn, just peered back at me through his hair with one dark eye. “They’ve gone you know. You can get back in your car and leave”

I stopped halfway up “Um, well, as anxious as I am to do that, I kind of… can’t”.

He turned, his voice filled with irritation “What do you mean you can’t? Why not?”

“Well, assuming they didn’t slash my tires. The whole reason I got stuck here in the first place is because I ran out of gas. The gauge quit working. If you could loan me some, and help me check out my car, I’ll give you my thanks and be on my way.”

He padded back down the stairs on his bare feet till he was standing before me, the unequal footing making him tower over me even more than he already had. His anxiety over my presence in his home was obvious, his muscles repeatedly tensing and relaxing as he tried to keep his cool. “I don’t use it. Isn’t there someone you could call?”

Not really, but admitting that nobody would notice I was missing would be incredibly stupid under the circumstances. “They smashed my phone, all my contacts were in it”.

He sighed again and pinched the bridge of his nose.

As grateful as I was for his intervention, I didn’t appreciate being treated like an annoyance or a nonentity “Is huffing your response to everything?”

His eyes opened abruptly and he looked at me. Really looked at me. His dark eyes focusing on my face with an intensity that disturbed me much more than his apathy had. I resisted the urge to squirm under his scrutiny “Are you afraid of me?”

A derisive snort escaped me “Because you’re morose and full of yourself? One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”

He cocked his head to the side disdainfully “God, I’m sick of hearing zombies parrot phrases they know nothing about”.

I narrowed my eyes at him and cocked my head in mocking response “It’s fucking Hamlet”.

The corner of his lip tugged back, almost a smirk, before he turned and continued up the stairs, granting me permission to follow him by tossing over his shoulder “Don’t touch anything”.

I frowned at his back as I followed him around the landing to the next set of stairs, then I reached out impulsively, poking an ancient dust covered amplifier as I passed it.

“I saw that” his voice was still low and detached, but there was a note of amusement in his rebuke.

His pace on the stairs was slow, as if he had little energy or enthusiasm for anything. “You can crash here till morning, but you’d better be gone before nightfall”.

I’d barely reached the top of the stairs when he had me by the throat and I impacted the wall. Hard.

I opened my eyes to find I’d instinctively placed one hand over his in an attempt to remove it and braced the other against his bare chest. “And don’t even think about stealing anything, or telling anyone else about this place” he growled.

He was impossibly fast. I’d been prepared to defend myself but I hadn’t even noticed any tale tell muscle tension to alert me that he was preparing to do anything. I certainly never saw him coming for me.

My fingers were clawing at his hand while my brain tried to focus, to shake off the shock and think. He asked me a question, answer the question and he’ll let go. His eyes were boring into mine, his face set in a fierce scowl that I imagine must have been responsible for the looks of terror I’d glimpsed on Randy and his thug's faces at the door. _Focus Lil, focus!_

_ Don’t steal, don’t tell! _ My throat was closing up too much to speak, but I managed a faint nod. He immediately released the pressure, but remained pressed against me. His eyes began roaming over my face as his breath stirred my hair.

I should have been terrified. I should have struck out and run for it. I definitely should not have been turned on.

I was so turned on.

His eyes dropped to my mouth and I smirked up at him. He took a deep breath and dropped his hand, licking his lips before he walked away. While his back was turned I allowed myself a moment to recover, leaning against the wall and rubbing my now tender neck.

Then I followed him past a room with a red curved couch and the recording equipment caught my eye, making me give the room a second look. No wonder he was worried I might steal something… “May I ask for a name to address you by?”

He kept walking but I heard his quiet answer “Adam”.

I restrained the snort this time; if he heard me he was ignoring it. After a few steps he dropped his head in annoyed acknowledgment that I was waiting for him to ask my name, and sighed before obliging me in his disinterested tone “How shall I address you?” He had his head tuned to the side, listening but not looking at me, as he walked.

“Lilith”. His step faltered a moment and the muscles in his back rippled as he straightened up tensely before he continued walking.

He led me to a door and gestured me inside, where stacks of books and albums tottered precariously around a bed that had seen better days... a few decades ago. Everything was coated in a thick layer of dust.

“Couldn’t I just sleep out on that couch?” He hesitated, clearly uncomfortable with this. “Honestly I don’t really even need a bed… I’m kind of a night owl”.

He rolled his eyes and padded back to the room with the curving red couch.

That’s when the beauty caught my eye. “You have a ’68 Stratocaster!” I lifted it off the chair it was precariously perched in. It felt like holding a piece of history in my hands as I strummed the relic.

“I told you not to touch anything” Adam growled

“I have issues with authority” I shot back and continued to strum “You know, Hendrix had one just like this?”

I glanced up when Adam didn’t respond and found his eyes fixated on my hand as it traveled over the frets “Where did you learn that chord progression?” His tone was both accusing and fascinated.

“I didn’t learn it, I wrote it.” Indignant at his assumption, my hands had stilled on the strings. Adam gestured for me to continue.

Playing for people always gave me a nervous adrenaline rush and Adam’s silently intense scrutiny was making it worse. It made me chatty.

“I did some stuff for the White Stripes last album, but I’ve kinda been out of action ever since. I know this guy though… Ian? He says he knows a guy, someone really special, a musical genius. Keeps asking me if he can play him my stuff, but he’s like a reclusive rich guy and Ian really respects him so he doesn’t want to overstep his bounds and push it with him…”

I froze as my brain suddenly connected all the dots. Why Randy had told me he had a buyer for my ’64 Rickenbacker 360/12, and tricked me into meeting him and three other guys out here with it. Why he’d been pissed at me when his buyer hadn’t shown up.

Randy was going to rip off Ian’s buyer. Ian had outsmarted him.

And I was bait.

They’d followed Ian out here, hoping to find out who he was selling to and undercut him. They must have assumed he was meeting up with him in a car, making exchanges in an abandoned neighborhood where no one would see them. It never occurred to them that the rich guy _lived_ in one of the decaying houses.

“You’re him” was all I lamely managed to say as my hands froze on the strings.

Adam stood up, lithely unfolding himself as he reached over and pressed a button on a recorder. His mind a million miles away as he stepped toward me and gingerly tugged me towards the recording equipment. I watched him scurrying around flipping knobs and switches, the realization of what had really happened numbing my brain and making me feel like a complete idiot.

“Are you angry?” My voice sounded like an unsure child even to me, and Adam spun around from his frantic preparations, pressing a gentle finger to my lips and shushing me, a gleam in his eyes as he stepped back and said softly “Play it again”.

I looked into those eyes, startled by the beautiful light that had filled them while he anticipated what was to come, and for once I just did as I was told and played it again.

The notes buzzed around us now, no longer a soft acoustic twang. He’d plugged in the amplifier and switched on the recording equipment. I blocked out reality and lost myself in the moment, only allowing myself to focus on that beautiful light in Adam’s eyes and letting my fingers dance.

When I finished and the last notes died, Adam switched off the mics and stood in awe for a moment “Where did you learn to play like that?”

Disoriented by the suddenly change in him, I cast my eyes to the threadbare carpet “My stepfather started teaching me when I was five” when he didn’t respond I started babbling again “He was a handy man to pay the bills but music was always his real passion. My dad was a mathematician, he even wrote some books, but he died when I was a baby so I never really knew him. Mom’s a scientist… biology.” I told myself to shut up and an awkward silence ensued.

I finally raised my eyes to look at him and was surprised to find him almost smiling back at me “What else do you play?”

****

We spent nearly the entire night playing various instruments, layering them into the guitar track, experimenting, adding to each other’s compositions. By four AM we had something incredible recorded, and had developed a comfortable ease with one another.

I was wandering about the house while he put the finishing touches on the track, when I noticed the picture.

I’d been staring at it, trying to sort it out, when I suddenly heard his voice at my ear. Low, soft, almost seductive “It’s finished, come listen.”

“You’re married?” I tried to keep my tone casual, but disappointment has a way of bleeding through things.

He said nothing and I glanced over my shoulder to find him staring fondly at the photograph. My heart fell into the pit of my stomach.

“Yes, my Eve.” He said it with quiet reverence, and I envied her deeply.

“Adam and Eve…” I suddenly felt the need to change the subject. “Is this from one of those places that do the old fashioned photographs?”

“Something like that” he used both hands to take the picture frame from me, setting it on the table with long elegant fingers while his other hand remained wrapped around mine “Come”.

He tugged me out of the room and I followed him obediently, back to the soundboards. He clicked the playback and suddenly the room was filled with _our_ music.

It was everything I’d ever wished I could create, and it made a hundred new possible pieces bloom in my mind. Near the end I realized I was still gripping Adam’s hand and when it finished I could only stare back at him, overwhelmed.

He smiled at my reaction and stepped closer to stroke my cheek, his finger gliding tenderly over my skin, a glimpse of reverence in his eyes before they locked onto my lips and hunger overruled all else.

He’d leaned in slowly, he’s intentions clear, and I struggled between impatient desire and a nagging sense of wrongness. “Adam, your wife…”

He brought his hands up, cupping my face as his eyes roved over it “My wife and I have been together a very long time, and we have an understanding”.

His lips were a breath away from mine, and as badly as I wanted to feel them, complacency wasn’t in my nature “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before…”

He sighed “I find it hard to believe that the breaking of an institution would bother you so much, Lilith”.

He was toying with me, his haughty attitude a tip off, but it was a sore subject for me “It’s the breaking of someone’s heart that bothers me”.

I turned away, intending to put some distance between us, but he caught my wrist and held it tightly “Eve’s happiness means the world to me, we’re a part of one another. That said, we both have needs, desires that must be fed when that need arises. We don’t deny each other that. Our love is not so fragile that it cannot endure an indulgence. She’s my other half…we always come back to one another.”

My eyes were heavy with confusion when I turned them back up to his, hearing someone profess their love for someone else was definitely a form of seduction I was unfamiliar with, but those eyes were irresistible. Their sincerity feeding my desire, then darkening to show me his, telling me that I _could_ have him, that in this moment he was mine and mine alone.

§ He drew back on my wrist, pulling me closer to him, wrapping an arm around my waist as he reached over and clicked a switch. A dark and exotic music filled the room, the deep-toned hum of a pipe organ flowing into a sensual and slow beat. Adam pulled me against him as a male voice began to sing, indolent and low over a haunting sitar melody. He began to sway with me as a slow bass harmony underlaid the music, violins joined in accompaniment while I stared into those dark melancholy eyes... it was hypnotically seductive.

He laid his other hand against the back of my hips, pressing me closer to him as we swayed in rhythm with the lazily enthralling beat. His arousal pressing heavily against me despite his tight jeans. I slid my hands up the bare skin of his chest, velvety smooth over the planes of hard muscle and the hollows of sinew.

He reached up and cupped my face, running his thumb over my cheek as he leaned down and touched my lips with his own. It was a gentle contact, a question, an invitation. I answered by claiming his lower lip between mine.

His reaction was instantaneous, like triggering an inferno, and I was consumed. His breath was hot on my skin and his lips were hungry, demanding as they silkily bruised. I was slightly less restrained in my attentions to him.

His hand continued from my cheek to the back of my neck, where he gathered my hair in his fist and pulled my head back, exposing my neck.

His lips traveled slowly down my throat, sharp teeth gently nipping as his path continued down and a shiver ran through me. His other arm released my waist and opened my shirt, sliding it off my shoulders as his lips continued on to my collarbone. Tugging my shirt down until it tangled around my wrists, then leaving my arms partially restrained behind me.

He released my hair and his hand slid down my neck, stopping when he reached my breast and cupping the flesh firmly as he rubbed his thumb over my peaked nipple. His fingertips, callused by countless hours on the strings, were deliciously rough against my skin. I moaned and felt his mouth smile against my skin.

He'd unfastened my jeans and ran both hands over my hips before tucking his fingers into the waistband and pushing them down. When they were pooled at my feet, his mouth returned to my skin as he straightened and wrapped both arms around my waste.

He pulled me against him abruptly, so hard that my feet parted from the floor for a moment, leaving my jeans behind. My shirt slipped off my arms as well.

A moment of self-consciousness claimed me, a reality check in which I remembered that I was completely naked in the arms of a stranger, at his mercy in an urban wilderness.

Adam felt me stiffen and pulled back to look at me. The corner of his mouth tipped up in a sympathetic smile and he whispered low against my ear “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

I turned to look into those magnetic dark eyes and they seemed to plead with me for a moment before his lips found mine again and the music swelled around us, reverberating in my chest.

Lost in the exotic and erotic, my thoughts turned on a dime. How could I have imagined this man a stranger to me? My very soul recognized his in a way no one else had ever even attempted to imitate.

His mouth left mine and traveled down again, languidly stopping to suck, lick, or nibble teasingly as he passed over my breasts, my stomach, my hips.

He dropped to his knees before me, promise and anticipation in the eyes of a dark angel as he gazed up at me, his hands running up the inside of my thighs, encouraging me to spread my stance. I took a shaky breath and shifted, placing a hand on the smooth sloping deltoids of his shoulder to steady myself.

Then he kissed me there, as thoroughly as he had everywhere else, and I truly needed something to hold onto. My legs shook as I gripped his shoulder, my nails biting into his skin. I buried my other hand in his hair, whimpering as my head fell back. He tightened his grip on my thigh, his strength almost bruising, as his other hand joined his mouth, slipping a callous tipped finger inside, his tongue caressing while his finger stroked in slow rhythm with the music.

He crooked his finger, the rough tip stroking right where I needed it most and a low growl issued from my throat as the tension building in my lower abdomen seemed to pulse in time to his strokes.

An answering growl came from Adam and the vibration pushed me over the edge. The tension suddenly became a shockwave of almost painful pleasure before dissolving into ripples, leaving me barely able to keep my feet as they ebbed and faded. Adam’s now bruising grip made it apparent that remaining upright hadn’t been entirely my own achievement.

He laughed quietly as he rose from the floor, his lovely muscles making the motion a display of majestic ease. “You do have quite a voice, don’t you?”

I ignored the embarrassment I normally might have felt upon realizing I’d probably been making strangled cat noises and fumbled with the closure on his jeans.

He kissed me again and stilled my hands with his, slowing my franticly inept attempts until I was able to calm my hands and work the fastening undone. As I began to lower myself, he grabbed my arms “Not this time”.

I tipped my head back to look at him, afraid I’d done something wrong. He slid his hands up my arms and caressed my neck as he reassured “It’s just been a long time. It’ll be difficult for me to… restrain myself”.

His mouth was on mine again, inhibiting my ability to argue, so I used my hands instead, freeing him from his jeans. It was no easy task, he was large and the jeans were tight, but I had him in my hands before he could protest.

He was already rock hard so I skipped the teasing motions and went straight for the kill, stroking him in ways I instinctively knew would drive him mad.

He hissed, his hands tightening around my neck and bringing my mouth back to his for a kiss that was almost painfully passionate as I continued to stroke him.

He finally released my throat in order to wrap his arms around me and I sucked in a breath as his hands found their destinations one gripping my ass, the other digging firmly into the back of my thigh.

He lifted me, carrying me to the nearest wall while I wrapped my legs around him. My back crashed against it, but I barely felt the impact as I reached down to guide him into me. Another moment of sense struck me “Do you have a condom?”

He panted against my hair “Completely unnecessary, I assure you”.

I pulled back to look at him, my frown telling him things were crazy enough, and I was having none of this bullshit.

The annoyed sigh I seemed to have a talent for provoking issued from him again as he rolled his eyes “A moment”.

He was gone so quickly I was scrambling for purchase as I slipped down the wall. When I reached out to steady myself, my hand met his chest. I looked up, surprised to find him standing in front of me, rolling a condom on and muttering to himself.

I drew a breath to ask how the hell he’d done that, but his mouth covered mine again. I was hiked up against the wall, his thumb stroking my clit, his lips ravaging mine, and I forgot all about everything but guiding him into me. I stroked his tip against my clit as he adjusted our positions and then slid into my wet heat.

He released my mouth and groaned deeply, resting his forehead against the wall beside me, restraining himself while I adjusted to accommodate him. I wasn’t so self-possessed, telling him I was ready for more  with a buck of my hips. He drew back and began that slow pumping rhythm again, his hips doing things it was dangerous for any man to know how to do, things that could enslave a women.

He kept the pace unhurried, tasting me to distract himself, his lips alternately roving over my skin and seeking my mouth. It was as heady and enthralling as I’d somehow known it would be. Like being dizzyingly drunk on sensation and acutely connected at the same time.

His pace began to quicken just as I felt the tension building again. My body took control this time, telling him exactly what it wanted, my hips twisting and bucking against him.

He began thrusting hard, slamming my hips into the wall, cracked plaster sprinkling onto my hair and shoulders. I tucked my face into his neck, my lips enjoying the feel of the tender skin there, the taste of sweat as we both panted for breath. I shifted my legs to cross higher up behind his back, tipping my hips to allow him in deeper.

He groaned again and thrust even harder. I heard something in the wall behind me crack, but I paid it no attention, I was close. So close. My lips were on his neck when he reached down and stroked me again.

I came immediately, harder than ever I had before. Somewhere in my haze I heard him cry out and his thrusts became more frantic, erratic. He gasped “Oh fuck!” and slammed into me so hard he nearly put my hips into the wall.

“Lilith!” he panted into my ear as he bucked into me. I clung to him as he shuddered, till his orgasm subsided, and I wondered if I’d even be able to stand when it was all over.

“Am I bleeding?” He’d whispered the question into my ear, tenderly but with a note of something else… fear?

“Bleeding where?” I tilted my chin, bringing my mouth close to his cheek, willing him to meet my eyes and explain.

His eyes were closed and his brow furrowed, his voice colored with concern “My neck. You bit it when you came”.

He finally met my eyes and I blinked owlishly back at him, astonished for a moment before my eyes shifted over to his neck.

The mark from my teeth stood out angrily against his pale skin, but there was no blood “No... God Adam, I’m so sorry”.

He exhaled deeply and I felt the tension leave his body “It’s fine. It doesn’t hurt” He kissed my hair as he set me on my feet, but my legs were jelly and giving out before he’d even let go of me, so he scooped me up into his arms instead and headed for the couch. “No worse than I’ve done to you…”

As he laid me on the sofa, the back of my hips confirmed this, announcing to me that there would definitely be bruises later. Adam picked a piece of plaster out of my hair and tossed it away. The damage to the wall was visible over his shoulder; I pretended not to notice it as he leaned over me, giving me another gentle kiss as he climbed over and behind me.

He was curled against me on the small couch, lazily running his fingers over my skin as we started to drift off to sleep. A slightly swollen puncture wound, near the crook of my arm, caught his attention. “What’s this?” his voice was sleepy and rough, but quickly changed to pleading irritation “please, tell me you’re not a junky”.

I spun my head around to look at him “Did you really just accuse me of that? You? Who could pass for Syd Barret in a poorly lit room?”

A sleepy smile curled his mouth, amused at my offense, but his eyes remained peacefully shut, his voice just a little smug “What then?”

I shrugged, the cause nothing so glamorous as his assumption “I donate blood, whenever I can. I have a rare blood type... O negative”.

Adam’s eyes flew open, revealing an altogether different kind of hunger.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam’s reclusive vampiric existence is disturbed by a woman who needs his help, she turns out to be more than he expected. A ‘zombie’ he can’t apply the designation to… an equal he can’t resist.  
> Chapter 2: Lilith's reality check

I was suddenly afraid in a way that nothing else that had occurred tonight could compete with. I scrambled away from him, falling off the couch in my haste to put distance between us. He quickly closed those menacing golden eyes and took a deep breath.

 It wasn’t enough though, I’d seen the teeth.

 My mouth went dry and I was shaking like a leaf as my bare knees scraped over the frayed carpet, my feet bumping the table, sending an avalanche of clutter crashing onto the floor. Old habits die hard, my tough façade kicking in, growling an accusation at him as I increased the distance between us “Did you slip me something?”

He slowly turned himself to a sitting position, dropping his feet onto the floor and hunching over with his face in his hands, breathing deeply. My hand landed on my discarded jeans as I crawled and I looked around wildly for my shirt. I didn’t want to know what I would see if he revealed his face again. When I spotted my shirt I launched myself at it, scooping it up as I gained my feet and ran for the stairway.

 I went tearing down the stairs, clutching the handrail to steady myself as I tripped in my haste.  I finally saw the front door and went sliding across the tile, only stopping myself by slamming against the frame with my hip. The fresh bruises zinging in protest.

I set myself to reversing all the locks, cursing the delay, then throwing the door wide as I tore outside, fishing for my pocket in the wadded up jeans to retrieve my keys while running naked through the overgrown grass and onto the pavement. The slap of my bare feet slowing when I realized there was nothing I could do. My car was useless.

I stood looking at it, unwilling to turn around and see what might come out of the house. A coyote wailed nearby and I hastily pulled my clothes back on. Somehow it seemed like a helpful thing to do, being fully clothed, if I was going to have to fight off an animal.

Desperation convinced me I could hide in the car. I stilled my shaking hands long enough to slide the key into the lock when arms wrapped around me from behind.  My chest tightened, jerking as my breath came in tiny panting huffs. Squeezing my eyes shut as I felt his lips brush my ear lobe.

His voice was nearly a whisper, smooth and seductive “I’m sorry Lillith, truly I am.” as his lips traveled down to my neck, making me stiffen in expectation.

Instead of pain, his lips were brushing over my skin, kissing it gently, nuzzling as he spoke “It won’t happen again… I swear”.

Another coyote keened, just on the other side of the car from us. Close enough that I could hear their claws scratching as on the pavement, their panting excitement as they paced. Adam ran the tip of his nose up the shell of my ear as he whispered cajolingly “Come back inside”.

I’d learned not to get in a car with a man I didn’t trust, it was why I hadn’t asked him for a ride in the first place, the prospect hadn’t become any less daunting now. Knowing I was at his mercy, I was unable to summon much more than a pained whisper “Take me back into town, now”.

“My car is undergoing some… repairs right now. And anyway, it’s too close to dawn. I’ll get it sorted after we’ve had some sleep.” His tone was gentle, but firm. Inflexible.

The stiffness in my muscles began to fade, dissolving into the trembling weakness that hopelessness brings, nearly making me droop against him as I realized I had no other options.

He stood there with me wrapped in his arms, his lips still at my ear, patiently waiting for me to calm and capitulate “Come on Lillith”.

The night was beginning to die and in the lessoning dark I took in the scene before me, my damaged car, the crumbling houses hiding behind tall fences, the streets broken and surrendering to the zealous growth of grass, the eyes of wild animals shining back at me from dark thickets. So much more menacing now than it looked in daylight. The surrealness of it all colored what I’d experienced upstairs.

What had I really seen?

Logical possibilities presented themselves to me now, and anger bloomed in my chest as I began to appreciate the situation. I’d found someone amazing and he’d turned out to be batshit crazy. I let myself fall for a nutcase. Not just an eccentric hoarder with social issues, a bonafide surgically-altered delusional madman.

My burgeoning sense of betrayal brought some of my fight back. I tugged at his fingers while I glared accusingly over my shoulder at him “You paid someone to do that to your teeth?”

Adam’s answer was a sigh of exasperation as he tightened his grip, lifting me like a stubborn child and carrying me back into the house. I hardly noticed, absorbed by my fuming quest for reason. “How did they make them retractable?”

He diligently ignored me as he set me on my feet inside the threshold and flipped all the locks again. “How do you make your eyes do that, some sort of reflective contact?”

With a tired saunter, he turned and headed for the stairs “I’m exhausted Lillith, I haven’t had much to eat for a while now and I need sleep. We’ll figure out how to get you home tonight, when I wake up”.

He had a foot on the bottom step and being ignored again increased my frustration exponentially, I raised my voice at him “Why? Why do it? You get off on frightening people? Do you think it makes you interesting, some sort of gimmick?”

Adam’s head snapped up, eyes glittering darkly at me, warning me to back off “Don’t be ridiculous”.

I don’t back down well.

I locked eyes with him, yelling “I’m ridiculous? You think you’re a real fucking vampire!”

I blinked, surprised as the door jarringly impacted my back, for one confused second thinking someone had opened it and hit me, but my lids rose to find Adam nose to nose with me. He’d traversed the distance of the entire hallway and pinned me to the door in the time it had taken me to blink.

He didn’t bare his teeth again, but he radiated animalistic ferocity. His dark eyes becoming an unnaturally bright shade of gold as I watched, no contact edge visible, the pupil shining, glowing as it reflected the hall light. A lens implanted in the eye could reflect light in flashes, but this was something else, there was no surgery or lens that could fake this.

Tapetum lucidum.

He had nocturnal vision.

Sucking in a breath that I nearly choked on, the words came out in a whisper “You’re a real fucking vampire”.

A slightly smug smile flashed and faded before he leaned in closer “I haven’t eaten all night, I’ve expended a lot of energy, and I’m tired Lilith”. He placed a gentle kiss on my temple as he listed his grievances, I was still too shocked to flinch away from it, or the gentle stroke of his fingers along my cheek “I’m going to bed, I’ll see you tonight”.

Involuntarily gulping as he turned and headed back up the stairs, I was still staring blindly down the hallway when he tossed back a stern order I barely registered “and don’t leave any of the curtains open”.

Locked in a haze of adrenaline, terror, and the sudden absence of reality, I continued staring down the hall. My eyes out of focus, my breath shallow, my hand fiddling numbly with the door knob while I reevaluated everything.

Nothing had changed, I was still stuck in this house with him, and yet… everything had changed.

I hadn’t found a nutcase, I’d found a myth.

Vampires actually existed.

“I fucked a fucking vampire…”

His voice echoed down the stairs “I heard that”.

***

I paced the house for hours, reality turned on its head, my thoughts in chaos, survival instinct and an insatiable sense of curiosity at war. So I fell back on the solution everyone uses when they don’t know what to do… I stayed put and worried.

It was too far to walk back to town, and probably too dangerous, even in daylight. I was also starving and needed a bathroom. It had taken me nearly two hours to get the latter of those needs attended to. Adam had the most amazing antiques and tools lying around, and I’d never seen so many exotic and beautiful instruments in one house, but he stashed them in the strangest places.

I checked every other bathroom before working up the courage to enter his bedroom. It was strange, tiptoeing around the bed where he slept, my heart pounding with dread as I did my best not to disturb someone I’d been cuddled up to only a few hours ago.

There was no trace of what he’d shown earlier, only a beautiful man, pale and peaceful against the dark sheets he was tangled in. Curled up to his pillows, sexy even in his sleep, but there was also a vulnerability about him.

I found myself staring at Adam while trying to sort out my feelings. How much could I trust him? How much of what I’d felt last night had been real and how much had been blind lust. How much danger was I really in here?

In hindsight, I’d stupidly given him every opportunity to attack me, and he hadn’t. Even though he’d said he was hungry… that reminder had me thinking about what he ate and shaking my head at the absurdity of it all again.

I snuck into his bathroom and was relieved to find the sink and shower worked. The toilet was a different story. The water was shut off and the knob was long gone. I snuck back out to the shed behind the house, hoping to find a tool that would work.

Instead I found his car.

I also discovered he hadn’t lied about not having any gas.

The car was as deceptive as its owner, a vintage sports car on the outside and a modified electric engine under the hood, like nothing I’d ever seen. It was also a mess. Pieces of the modified engine were lying about, disassembled. I recognized some of the parts, but not enough to try and reassemble it myself.

I found a wrench and headed back to the bathroom, where I discovered Adam was a really sound sleeper. Several frustrated hits to the rust covered shutoff had freed it up enough to turn it and bring the toilet to life. Adam slept undisturbed through it all.

There was no food in the house so I made a quick trip to my car and grabbed my overnight bag along with the snack bars I kept in the glove compartment. The couch felt too exposed, so I found a more suitable bedroom on the first floor. It was very similar to Adam’s room, not as frilly or dusty as the one he had offered me last night, and the four-poster bed was comfortable. It still needed a lot of clearing and cleaning before I could sleep in it.

After I’d made it tolerable I locked the door and ate one of the bars while I laid on the bed, thinking about vampires. The rest of the house had been such a treasure trove of curiosities I’d allowed it to distract me. I hadn’t really evaluated my situation properly; just letting it simmer in the back of my mind. Now the relevant questions bubbled to the surface. If he really drank blood, what was I to him? A pet? A walking pantry?

Eventually I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer and dozed off.

I woke feeling dusty and gross, despite my attempt to clean up the room. It was still daylight out so I decided to take a chance on getting a quick shower. I snuck past Adam, still sleeping soundly, and tiptoed into his bathroom with my overnight bag. I nearly laughed with relief when I discovered the hot water worked.

After I’d washed I lingered, letting the heat from luxuriously modern showerhead sooth the bruises blooming over my lower back.

I was rinsing my face one last time when I suddenly felt his hands, sliding up my stomach to cup my breasts. I sputtered and spun, nearly falling out of the claw-foot tub. He caught me and pulled me against him, holding me till I regained my balance. I could feel the hard muscles of his abdomen tightening as he chuckled at my reaction.

Blinking the water from my eyes I looked up, warily keeping my arms taut against him, and he sobered immediately. Part of me was still freaked and part of me was sad to see that beautiful smirk leave his face.

The smile faded into a stern set of the jaw, his fingers pressing into my shoulders “Lilith, listen to me. Under no circumstances am I going to hurt you”.

His eyes traveled over my face and his voice softened with wonder “I haven’t come across anyone like you in hundreds of years... if ever.” His hands began to caress my arms, sliding up to brush over my neck before cupping my head. “Hurting you would be an atrocity. Your music, your mind, your talent…” His thumb stroked along my jawline as his eyes settled on my lips, darkening with desire before he tore them away to look me in the eye “damaging you would be like… taking a timeless work of art, one that inspires my soul, and reducing it to dust”.

His hands had tightened, emphasizing his last words, but his eyes were as they had been last night, dark and magnetic, no hint of the beast in their melancholic sincerity. While I didn’t necessarily feel completely safe or sane in his arms, I still wanted to be there.

So I replied as sensibly as possible “Your fridge doesn’t work, and it’s full of books”.

He kept staring down at me for another moment more and then a faint smile began blooming across his face while he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me to his chest.

I didn’t resist.

His wet hands slid over me, one gliding up to my chin and tipping my lips to his, the other running down to cup my backside, pressing me against him as his lips descended on mine. The water was spraying against the back of my head, stray droplets scattering in his hair and taming it in dark curving streams against his skin.

I reached up and ran my hand over the stubble along his jawline then slipped my fingers through his damp hair and tugged, deepening the kiss. I felt him hardening against my hip, and a voracious need to have him again overtook me completely.

Reaching down and sliding my fingers over the light smattering of hair trailing down from his abdomen, I stroked him while his lips traveled over my ear, my jawline, my neck. He punctuated his exploration with occasional deep groans and hisses, before my teasing became too keen and he seized my wrists, looping my arms around his neck while his mouth sought my breasts.

My fingers slid back into his hair as he ran his tongue over my nipple, circling one wet nub while his thumb rubbed across the other, then squeezing it almost painfully before soothing it with his tongue. His hand traveled over my wet skin until he found my center, and then it was my turn to moan and hiss.

He hand was repaying my wickedness in similar fashion so I distracted myself with learning him, running my lips over his chest and neck, tasting the water on his skin as I swept my tongue over the soft smoothness overlaying lithe hard muscle. Some part of my brain recognized that my bite mark from last night was gone.

As intoxicating as the taste of his skin was, the expert ministrations of his hands could not be ignored. I gave in and bucked against him and his mouth found mine again.

He hiked my leg up on his hip, pressing me against the tiled wall surrounding the tub. My bruises screamed in protest, making me wince, and Adam froze. I slid my hand around his wet body, gripping the curve of his well-muscled arse, pressing him against me while encourging him with a kiss.

He deepened the kiss, but braced his arms against the wall, keeping my bruised backside off it. Then his lips were trailing down my throat and over my collarbone to my shoulder as his hands gripped my waist, gently encouraging me to turn around while his lips trailed to the back of my neck. His hands gripped my shoulders, bending me forward and then sliding down to grip the front of my hips, avoiding the bruises.   

The warm water was pelting over the back of my hips and streaming down over my swollen clit. I felt him at my entrance for a moment, anticipation nearly taking my breath before he finally plunged, burying himself to the hilt, making me cry out and grab the edge of the tub for balance.

He slid out again and teased me with a few long slow strokes until I arched my back, stretching out my arms and bracing myself against the tub rim, pressing myself back against him in both request and a demand. He dug his fingers into my hips and obliged with a punishing rhythm.

His pace slowed as he reached up to adjust the showerhead. Aiming the water so that it stippled against our joining each time he leisurely withdrew. I moaned and he released my hips to slide his hands up the back of my thighs, stroking and exploring my wet skin while he continued his roguish pace.

When I pushed back against him again, ready for something more, he stopped completely and leaned over my back, kissing my neck and shoulders while his hands cupped my breasts, kneading and teasing. Then he reached up for the showerhead again and detached it, bringing it under me and gripping my hip with the other hand.

Aiming the spray at my folds, he plunged; building a rhythm that had me writhing beneath him until I came so hard my legs nearly gave out. My own voice echoed his name back up at me from the basin.

His rhythm never slowed as he released the showerhead and let it lean against the drain. He wrapped both arms around my waist and plunged deeply as he came, nearly lifting my feet off the enamel as his rhythm lurched and he cried out. My name was a guttural growl and then a howled exaltation that echoed off the tiles.

When we’d nearly caught our breath, Adam replaced the showerhead and shut off the water. He stepped out of the tub, grabbing a towel and offering me a hand as I contemplated the showerhead. “You know, I wondered why everything in here looks outdated, except for that”. Adam smiled coyly and tossed the towel at me.

When we’d dried off, he took me by the wrist, pulling me into the bedroom and collapsing onto the bed, obviously exhausted. He tugged again, inviting me to lay down with him, and raised his head when I resisted.

I answered the question in his eyes by looking over at the photograph beside his bed. His gaze followed mine before he dropped his eyes to the floor, giving me a curt but empathetic nod of understanding. He released my hand, and I let it drop to my side.

“She’s one too?” I’d asked quietly; uncomfortable with my complacency in this situation, strange as it was. Adam’s dark eyes were devoid of shame when they met mine and he nodded.

“When does she come back?” I was squirming inside as I waited to hear the answer, my thoughts were still chaos on the matter but my heart was telling me I couldn’t walk away from this. Not yet.

“She doesn’t. She lives in Tangier” he turned and looked at the wall of photographs, his expression becoming the slightest bit aggravated “near Marlow”.

It was my turn to let my gaze follow his “Christopher Marlow?” I laughed “You’re telling me Christopher Marlow is still around and living in Tangier?” I looked back at Adam, the smile dying on my lips.  He was not amused. After a moment of his austere stare I cleared my throat and casually relented “Okay… Christopher Marlow is a vampire”.

Turning my attention back to the wall, I genuinely considered it “Certainly gives The School of Night a whole new meaning…”

Adam reached out and took my hand again, absentmindedly playing with my fingers while I wondered how many other people in those pictures and paintings were vampires. Was Tesla a vampire? Bach? Thinking about it had me getting back into ‘too much for me to grasp at once’ territory again.

Adam obliged me by changing the subject “Listen, I’m not going to be able to fix your car tonight. I lost my source about a week ago and I haven’t found a replacement yet. My supply is… low” the pause troubling him before a small smirk replaced it “... and I sadly underestimated how much you could wear me out”.

I tried to put the cynical part of my brain on hold while I considered things I hadn’t wanted to think about yet “Your source? Don’t you just… you know… drink… people?”

“It’s not the fifteenth fucking century, Lilith. I purchase it through blood banks. I created a dummy transfusion clinic on paper and purchased the blood through a contact, but they had a shortage…” he looked a little abashed and lowered his voice “I got impatient…” then he closed his eyes, laying his head back on the pillow “and my contact got suspicious. I had to cut ties with it”. He released a long exhausted sigh, as well as my hand “If I don’t feed soon, I’m going to be in real trouble”.

His appearance lent truth to his words. His natural pallor was becoming much more pronounced, almost waxen. His movements lethargic and his breathing shallower then it had been when he’d slept earlier. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried not to think about the insanity of what I was about to do, then I grabbed my clothes and slipped from the room.

I was rifling through my car, trying to keep an ear out for the coyotes, and had just found the bag I was searching for, when Adam scared the piss out of me. I hadn’t heard anyone approaching before he suddenly opened the car door and I hit my head on the roof. Then I sat there holding it for a moment, more annoyed with myself than in actual discomfort. I wasn’t usually so jumpy. “Fuckin’ vampires!”

He placed a gentle hand on my head, but ignored my outburst “What the hell are you doing? You shouldn’t be out here alone”.

I held up the bag in triumph and Adam looked at it cynically “And what is that?”

“For now? The answer to your problems”.

***

I sat on the couch, clutching the bag while Adam leaned against the door frame and stared at it suspiciously. His pace up the stairs had been downright elderly. “I volunteer with an HIV prevention program, we’re funded through donations, and provide clean needles to addicts, as well as counseling and education... and I draw samples, for testing”.

His eyes snapped up to mine “you know how to do this?”

I shrugged “Music hasn’t paid the bills. Phlebotomy does… or did.” I had foolishly quit my job at the hospital yesterday when I’d thought I was going to make a lot of money off my guitar.

My confidence faded some as we went back into unknown territory “How… how much do you need?”

“Lilith, I can’t ask you to…” He pressed his lips together, dropping his eyes as he considered how bleak his situation had become.

He finally looked up at me, trying a new argument with himself “You just donated…”

I tried to keep my expression free of anything but determination. His pallor and exhaustion was nearly as frightening as his secret had been. It was a different kind of fear, a fear for him rather than a fear of him. That was my heart talking though; my head was only persuaded by the fact that I needed him to get me out of this mess. Either way, this weirdness seemed to be the only solution to our odd predicament.

When I didn’t back down he slumped a little more and dropped his eyes to the table. As tired as he was, his reluctance was obvious as he reached out and lifted an elegant crystal cordial glass off the cluttered surface and placed it in my hand. He paused for a moment to stroke his thumb over the back of my fingers, and without another word he walked into his bedroom and shut the door.

The angles, and tying off the tourniquet on my own, created an extra degree of difficulty for me, but the biggest problem was the volume. The tubes were meant to collect enough sample for testing, about four and a half milliliters. It had taken 13 tubes just to fill the glass.

When it was done, I took a deep breath and carried it to Adam’s door, concentrating on encouraging the bout of lightheadedness to pass rather than thinking about the bizarreness of what I was doing. It had been too soon since I’d donated, but I was still under a pint of loss altogether.

I tapped my knuckle against the wood and the knob twitched, then stilled as I heard his hesitant voice from the other side “Lilith, you’re not… contaminated. Are you?”

A smile tugging at my mouth, I considered his question. What exactly was the etiquette for this situation? Was it rude of him to ask? Should I be offended? I was from the music industry after all. I couldn’t completely keep the sarcasm from my voice “I’m a vegetarian, I’ve never done drugs, I hardly ever drink, and I don’t have any diseases. I got tested two months ago… as moral support”.

His voice issued back, still skeptical “Two months?”

A sigh I couldn’t restrain slipped out “I haven’t been with anyone else in over a year Adam.” Since I was on a roll, I needled him “You know, you’re kind of a drama queen for a fucking vampire.”

He didn’t say anything, but the door cracked open and the glass was snatched from my hand before it snapped shut again.

I busied myself cleaning up the mess and trying not to think about the fact that I had just handed a man a pretty crystal drinking glass filled with my blood, and he was behind that door drinking it.

When I finished repacking the bag I looked up to find he’d silently reentered the room and was watching me, a tiny smear of red at the corner of his lips. It suddenly occurred to me that I’d been so focused on trying not to think about the absurdity of it all, I hadn’t considered how it might affect him. I watched him warily, wondering if there really was such a thing as bloodlust.

He had an intensity to him, more grateful appreciation than anything, as he stepped towards me and stroked his thumb up along my jaw. He followed it with a kiss, savoring and thorough. There was a faint coppery taste to his mouth, and his teeth were still slightly sharper then they’d been before. He released my lips and kept his forehead pressed to mine, gracing me with another faintly doting smile.

“Your eyes are blue”. I wasn’t sure why I’d said it out loud, but they were. A beautiful blue, lighter then they’d been before, when he was hungry.

He ignored my statement of the obvious, smiling contentedly while nuzzling my hair and neck “Mmmm, thank you Lilith”. He pressed his lips to my neck in a hard suckling kiss “You know, I’ve got a melody floating around in my head right now, I’d like you to help me write it tonight, before you go”. He returned to his nuzzling and I tried to ignore my body’s response and focus on what I wanted to tell him.

“Adam, I might be able to help you find a new… supplier” his nuzzling had progressed to gentle kisses, reverently peppered over my collarbone and shoulder and a doubtful murmur was all the response I received but I continued anyway “I know a guy at the hospital, he owes me big time, and he needs money”.

Adam pulled back, suddenly riveted, and waiting for me to continue.

“His name is Watson…”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam’s reclusive vampiric existence is disturbed by a woman who needs his help, she turns out to be more than he expected. A ‘zombie’ he can’t apply the designation to… an equal he can’t resist.   
> Chapter 3: Connections

“He’s kind of a creep, but he works nights at MDH, in transfusion screening”.

A brief smile of disbelief bloomed over Adam’s face and he turned away, sobering to ask skeptically “How big of a favor?”

I bit my lip, but decided to be blunt “That depends on how much you’re willing to pay him”. 

All pretense of casual interest faded and Adam turned to me, deadly serious “I’ll give him seven times its worth, more for any O-negative he provides.”

“You can afford that? That could be a fortune, long term …” I had a penchant for being cynical about money.

Adam scowled at me “I have centuries of profit to draw on Lilith, it’s not a problem”.

It was my turn to smirk “Independently wealthy and you live in a large spooky decaying house? A real life Gomez Adams, you are…” My levity only managed to tug at the corner of his scowling lips, but a moment later he drolly snapped his fingers twice. Unrepentant, I grinned back at him and the corner of his mouth lifted before spreading into an amused smile.

When we went back into his recording area, Adam brought in an unusual instrument, like a guitar but with a large round body and a short neck. I raised a brow “You play the lute?”

He glanced up at me and paused significantly, hinting he’d expected better of me, and I sighed at myself “Of course you play Lute…”

Another smile tugged at his mouth as he turned his attention to checking the tuning. When it passed muster he sat down on the couch beside me, his eyes were solemn now as they met mine   “From the moment I tasted you, this just wouldn’t leave me alone”. He began playing a repetitive minimalist string melody, longing and hypnotic.

He was quickly lost in the music, his face beautifully haunted as he played. The longing memory of something delicious and intense was evident in every line of his body, reminding me of how he’d looked when he came out of the bedroom earlier, the warm sleepy contentment, the faraway quality to his gaze that quickly changed to intense fascination when he focused on me. After a few refrains the bass, rhythm, and reverb under layers to complement his melody began to swirl in my mind.

I picked up a guitar and joined him, disturbing his revere briefly before he nodded for me to continue. I’d never experienced anything like composing with Adam. We had an uncanny musical chemistry I’d never experienced before, an ability to harmonize that was nearly effortless. I could follow him anywhere, even when he challenged me. After a few minutes he stopped and methodically began transferring the notes to paper, though at a speed that startled me.

His notation was scrawling yet elegant, reminding me of classic manuscripts I’d studied. He finished quickly and slid the paper over to me so I could add the accompaniment. When I finally handed it back, he smiled as he scanned my contribution. “Precious as muses are… I knew you were something more than cherished inspiration, Lilith.” He hesitated before quietly adding “You’re … like being able to see my reflection”.

I watched Adam for a moment, struck by his words, but unsure how to respond. Immortality issues were still a little over my head. Instead I checked the time on his laptop “Adam, it’s getting late.”

He was completely engrossed in making notations, but smirked at my interpretation of time “Yeah?”

I knew he didn’t want to hear this any more than I wanted to say it, but I pressed on “The store closes soon. If we’re going to get gas and set things up with Watson before I leave, we need to get going.”

He stopped abruptly, his hands spreading over the paper while he thought about what was coming. He finally sighed and issued a reluctant “Right”.

He quietly laid aside the music sheets and shut down all of the recording equipment, leaving the room without so much as a glance in my direction.

I followed him to the foyer where he methodically pulled on a pair of black leather gloves before we stepped out onto the porch. He locked the door with cautious care and led me though the knee deep grass around the side of the house, throwing wary looks over his shoulder at our shady surroundings.

We reached the car and he handed me a flashlight to hold up while he quickly reassembled the stripped pieces I’d seen earlier that day. “I was making some modifications”.

Fascinated, I said nothing but watched everything in the narrow beam, marveling at the Tesla based system he had created.

When he was finished he detached a line that ran to the power pole and started the engine, which buzzed to life with an oddly distinct humming roar. He climbed back out and closed the hood as he came around the car to open the passenger door for me.

Unreasonable fear rose up in my chest as I slid unto the seat; I really loathed being alone in a car with a guy. Adam took note, looking at me for the first time since we’d spoken. I lamely tried to cover my awkwardness by taking an obvious shot at his gloves “Speed racer?” Adam rolled his eyes and shut my door.

He eased the car across the overgrown lot and out onto the deserted streets. The nearest Wal-Mart was about 20 minutes away.

“What were you doing out here with those kids last night anyway?” he kept his tone strictly curious, without implying I’d been an idiot to get into that situation, which I appreciated.

A dull glow from the slow march of passing streetlamps bloomed and faded, plunging us into shadow between each desolate post. “They told me they had a buyer for my 1964 Rickenbacker 360-12. Turns out I was just the honeypot so they could take advantage of Ian’s buyer. Only nobody showed”.

Adam digested this for a moment, his face darkening with irritation and I began to worry that I might have gotten Ian into trouble. Instead his tone implied I was an idiot after all “You have… a 1964 Rickenbacker 360-12?”

“Had. Those jackass’s snatched it out of my trunk when they ran off. Don’t get too excited, some idiot refurbed it in the 80’s, but it was still worth about ten grand”.  Irritation, at the loss and my own stupidity, burned hot in my throat as I thought about what I’d foolishly hoped to accomplish. “I was going to pick up the cash on the way out of town…” Adam glanced over at me broodingly and I mumbled a justification “I can’t keep watching this place crumble into dust”.

His lips tugged sympathetically “Where were you headed?”

“I’ve got a cousin in London. Haven’t seen her in years… she has a whole family now.” We both ignored the hollow uncertainty that permeated my words, making the next logical question hang thick in the air. My altered possibilities went unasked after and we rumbled down the dark streets in silence for a while.

“How soon do you think I can get the stuff?” He seemed edgier on the issue now than he had been earlier.

“Tomorrow night at the earliest. He’ll need time to collect it and cover his tracks. Even if he started straight away, it’d be too close to dawn for you to risk it tonight”.

Adam subtly shifted, a flash of his eyes and a sudden tenseness about him announced he was uncomfortable with my answer. “Not soon enough?”

His eyes flicked over to me and then back to the road. “It’s just… I was already in bad shape before you helped me out this afternoon…” He flexed his hands on the wheel, anxious.

“If you need me to, I can give you one more before I leave”. It would put me at a pint of loss, the most my body could handle. It would also take me weeks to replace it, and I’d probably need to delay my departure just to be sure I could handle it, but I would probably need some sleep by then anyway.

Adam licked his lips and frowned, torn between concern and anticipation as we pulled into the parking lot.

He didn’t come inside with me, just pulled out a roll of twenties and handed me a wad.

I walked into the store as casually as possible, but as soon as the automatic doors whooshed open reality smacked me in the face. Coldly bright florescent lighting, tired employees anticipating closing time and shooting daggers at the few people casually wandering the aisles twenty minutes before closing time. The broken loudspeaker buzzing announcements no-one could understand. The dirty floors and poorly stocked shelves that were typical around here now.

As I hurried through the store my thoughts continued further on this path of reentry to the real world. What the hell was I doing? Helping the vampire waiting for me in the parking lot? There couldn’t possibly be a vampire waiting for me. Why not? Because Wal-Mart, that’s why. Vampires were limited to the tiny book section or the DVD department. They did not sit in vintage sports cars in the parking lot.

I grabbed handfuls of high protein meal replacements from the health food section while I carried on this internal monolog, it continued on through the five-gallon gas can and a prepaid burner phone. Then I paid the irritated cashier and headed out into the nearly deserted parking lot.

My stride shortened as I considered what I was doing. I was back in civilization. I had a phone. I could get a friend to take me back for my car in the morning. There was no reason to trap myself with him again. I tensed as the lock on the store’s automatic doors clicked briskly behind me, limiting my options.

Then I saw Adam. He was peering around the car, keeping a careful watch out for trouble, when he spotted me. Those compelling eyes locked onto mine and he smirked, pleased that I’d come back. The engine hummed to life again and he leaned over and pushed my door open.

And just like that, I climbed back into a car with a vampire in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

I held out my hand to return his change and he waved me off with a nod as he drove across the street to a gas station. Pocketing the money, I pulled the phone out of the packaging, setting it up while he filled the gas can and stowed it in the trunk. Then I called information and had them connect me to the hospital. Adam climbed back into the car and set off for the house as I was dialing through the extensions to reach Watson.

His low creepy voice came on the line, casually distracted “Watson”.

“It’s Lilith” In the ensuing silence I heard the creak as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. I’d never called him before, so he knew this was going to be significant. “I have a proposition for you”.

He sighed. “Yeah, I bet. Does this proposition involve extorting money from me?”

“Oh, what’s with the sour attitude Watson, no more clandestine activities to entertain you on graveyard?” Watson got bored on the night shift, I’d lost track of how many times his creepy ass had hit on me when I would drop off draws. His pickup lines usually involved trying to get me to come over and watch his classic horror movie collection. One night I’d walked in on him in the lab having sex with a member of the cleaning staff.

“I don’t have any money Lilith; you know that better than anyone.” I did know that, it was also my leverage. They’d been so surprised at getting caught they’d scrambled wildly for cover, and we all watched in horror as a scanning electron microscope, and the analysis systems attached to it, crashed onto the floor.

Watson had claimed the scope had been sent off for calibrations and maintenance while he tried to raise enough money to repair or replace it. If he didn’t pull it off soon, the end of his career would be the least of his worries. “Haven’t raised that two-hundred and fifty k yet, huh?”

I moved the phone a little away from my ear as the distorted boom of his hand slamming down against his desk resonated out of the earpiece. Adam shifted anxiously, dark eyes continually glancing between me and the road. I reassured him with an eye roll before I switched the phone to my other ear.

Watson drew an angry breath to come back at me and I casually cut him off “You know I heard Tina found another job last week”.  I’d only ever kept my mouth shut in the first place because she really needed her job. Watson didn’t say anything but I could hear his angry breathing.

“Look, I don’t want to jerk your chain Watson, honest. I’m trying to help you out. If you listen, I’ll make you all the money you need and more”.

There was another aggravated silence before he issued a curt “Talk”.

Adam caught the brief grin I flashed him before I carefully articulated stern directions at Watson. “A guy is going to come in. You are going to give him canisters of screened transfusion quality blood, as much O-negative as possible, and as fresh as possible.”

Relieved that I hadn’t asked for anything he couldn’t pull off, Watson calmed, unfortunately I’d also piqued his curiosity “What’s it for?”

My casual act evaporated, my voice becoming steely “That’s none of your business. Ask questions and the deal is off”.

Predictably, he started to balk “I can’t possibly…”

I dropped my trump card “He’ll pay you five times it’s worth, and he’ll keep coming back IF you keep your mouth shut.”

There was a long pause during which I could hear his pen tapping rapidly against his desk. “Deal”.

My lids drifted down in relief and I grinned “He’ll come by your lab tomorrow night”.  He was just about to hang up when I added as gravely as possible “And Watson… don’t fuck with him”.

His teeth snapped together in apprehension just before I disconnected the call.

I turned to Adam, grinning at my first successful attempt at extortion, “I brought a set of my ex’s scrubs into the house for you, I was going to toss them on my way out of town, but I thought you could use them to blend in, you can hide your face with a surgical mask. I think I have an extra name tag in my bag, you’ll just need to get a name engraved on it…” I trailed off when I realized he wasn’t paying attention to me anymore.

His face was grim and he was focused on something straight ahead as the car began to slow. I turned to look out at the road and realized we’d already reached his house, and then stared in horror at the empty section of pavement where my car had been.

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me!” Aside from my wallet and my overnight bag, everything else I’d owned had been in that car. It wasn’t much, I’d sold off everything I couldn’t travel with, one guitar was already gone, and anything precious or valuable had been in my bag. Essentially I’d lost my clothes, my favorite guitar, the Krakebs my stepfather had left me, some books, and the money I’d hoped to make off selling the car before I flew to London.

He sighed and pulled the car into the tall grass. I didn’t wait for him to open my door, just spilled from the car and hurried back to the street to stand where my car had been, as if I could will it to magically reappear.

Adam came up behind me, purposely shifting the plastic shopping bag in his hands so that I knew he was approaching. The smooth leather of his gloved fingers slipped between my lax ones and he squeezed my hand sympathetically “Fuckin’ zombies”.

The coyotes howled in the distance, nowhere near as close to the house as they usually were. He gave me another minute, head swiveling constantly to make sure we were alone, before he tugged me towards the house.

He let us in and reset the locks before he began slipping off his gloves and placing them on the hall stand. I leaned back against the door and banged the back of my head on the glass in frustration “My two favorite instruments in the world were in that car”.

Adam smirked at me and my ire flared as I cocked an eyebrow and leveled my gaze at him, waiting for an explanation. “People usually lament the loss of their personal effects in these situations”.

I smirked back, my irritation with him fading as quickly as it came on. He turned off the lights and headed for the stairs but I stayed behind, feeling stuck in the dark in more ways than just the physical. I had no money, no job, nothing to sell, nowhere to stay, and no way to get anywhere… not exactly the change I’d been looking for. I wanted new experiences and inspiration, and now I was dependent on the kindness of a mythical villain.

Adam came back down to the foot of the stairs and peeked back at me from the last step, his big blue eyes studying me from under his dark hair. He sighed and came back into the hall, sauntering towards me with a wicked smile. Sexy as sin.

Maybe I was looking at this wrong. Maybe there were more new experiences and inspiration in front of me than I would find anywhere else.

He reached up, cupping my face, and my heart rate sped up the moment he touched me. He didn’t stop his slow approach till we were nose to nose. Then he persuaded in a softly seductive voice that made my breath catch “I will pay you a generous finder’s fee, more than enough to make up for the guitars and your car, but I’d like you to stay here for a while, write some new music with me before you go.”

I was intrigued by his offer, but my instruments were not so easily dismissed… the gift from my stepfather for sentimental reasons I wasn’t ready to talk about. “That guitar was solid Cocobolo with an impeccable fundamentalist tone. Her voice was irreplaceable…” He smirked appreciatively, those hypnotic eyes pulling me in again, and his lips claimed mine.

This time his kiss was a promise of things to come, and just when he had me desperately playing along he pulled back and whispered “Come upstairs. I think there’s someone you should meet”.

He took my hand and turned, leading me down the hall without another hint as to his intentions. My body was still willing to follow him anywhere, but my head was working it’s self into a panic. Who could he possibly want me to meet? Eve? Was he going to put me on the phone with Eve? I was so not ready for this.

We reached the third floor before my reluctance finally manifest and I tugged back against his gentle grip. He turned back and smiled “Lilith, may I introduce you to Hildegard”.

He was indicating a beautiful, but unusual, guitar hanging on a rack of instruments. It was probably from the late ‘70’s but she was classically well made by a master. African blackwood judging by the shiny black, almost purple, tone of the wood. All hesitation forgotten, my fingers itched to try her out. “Hello Sappho”.

She felt like she was made for me as I played a little of the piece we had been writing before we’d left. Enough to confirm she had a voice that was more than a match for my beloved Cocobolo.

I smiled up at Adam, thrilled to have the opportunity to play her for however long I was here, but my smile faded quickly to concern. Though he was smiling at me indulgently, he’d already begun to look peaked again.

“Adam, are you all right?” He didn’t answer; instead he looked down at his feet for a moment and chewed his lip. Resigned, I set the guitar down and gently instructed “Go lie down. I’ll bring it to you in a few minutes”.

His dark eyes peeked up at me endearingly through his hair, his expression a mixture of gratitude and apology before he walked into his bedroom.

I repeated my process from earlier, only this time I brought the glass into Adam’s bedroom. He was lounging on his bed, staring up at the pictures on the wall, and was mildly surprised when I approached him with the blood. “Finally accepting it?”

As I handed him the glass I gave him a slightly superior smirk “There are still certain things I’m trying to adjust to. Like the fact that you have Marlow and Keats on the same wall as Harpo and Rodney Dangerfield… Well I get Harpo, but Rodney?” I walked back out of the room, smiling even though I was fighting off the sluggish feeling setting in.

Adam playfully tossed a pillow at me, deliberately falling short “maybe it’s because I get no respect!”

I chuckled to myself at his reaction but the drop in my blood pressure was beginning to make my head spin. After a glass of water and a protein bar, I decided to go lay down in the bedroom I’d chosen earlier, just until it passed.

A few minutes later I was startled by a shift in the mattress and looked up to find Adam crawling onto the bed. He was smiling like a sated tiger, but every muscle and sinew belayed this, rippling as he stalked towards me.

His voice was dreamy and deep “For so delicious were the words she sung, It seem’d he had lov’d them a whole summer long. And soon his eyes had drunk her beauty up, Leaving no drop in the bewildering cup, And still the cup was full,—while he afraid, Lest she should vanish ere his lip had paid, Due adoration, thus began to adore” He breathed me in deeply before his lips fastened onto mine. I smiled against his mouth as I recognized the words, Lamia by Keats, theorized to be a parallel to Lilith.

Pulling in another deep breath, he rumbled throatily “You’ve become an addiction”. Emanating a sense of bliss, his coppery kisses were slow and deep as he straddled me. Eventually his mouth trailed down my throat and he began to unbutton my shirt.

“Adam?” My voice caught and I cleared my throat tentatively.

He murmured drowsily against my throat “hmm?”

Attempting to initiate the conversation was hard enough, bluntly asking the question made me want to squirm “What’s it like?”

He drew back, scowling gently before understanding dawned in his blue eyes. “You’re an exception, your exquisite, but for my kind, good blood is…” his voice trailed off, at a loss for the words to describe it. Instead he laid a hand over my heart for a moment and concentrated on the beat, as if memorizing it. His eyes snapped back to mine with that disconcerting intensity “I’ll show you”.

He drew my clothing off, piece by piece, kissing my skin as it was bared. When I was naked he brought his lips back to mine as his fingers sought my folds, his lips and teeth teased my breasts. He didn’t delay there long before he slid into me, his eyes fastened on mine as he began a slow rhythm.

There were a few summers when my stepdad had found day jobs at Neff Park on Lake St. Clair. They had a huge pool and a small marina. He worked and I hung my feet off the docks and strummed his guitar.

Near the end of a particularly hot summer, the lake felt almost like bathwater. I remember letting my legs hang in it, leisurely rocking them back and forth to the beat of whatever I was playing. Occasionally a wake would wash in and the warm water would envelope my legs in torrents, pushing them back and then releasing them to dangle under me, where they would drift in the current until the next wave in the wake inexorably pushed them back and eddied around them.

That was what making love to Adam felt like when he was sated. He ebbed and crashed into me in a fluid rhythm that never faltered. His warmth enveloping me, making me feel safely insignificant and desperately vital all at the same time. A force of nature that brought droplets of water to coat my skin just as the lake had.

I was drowning in him, floating in a deep dark warm abyss, while hoping no one would try to save me.

When I finally came, to that slow relentless cadence, it was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Like music that enraptures, my mind and heart had become as entangled in him as my body was.

His delicious shudder followed and I knew… If I had become his addiction, he had become mine.

We laid there on the bed, catching our breath, the physical desire to touch and explore one another untempered as we entwined our fingers and contemplated what just happened. My heart rate slowed again, a tranquil beat that matched the pace Adam had set, and I realized why he’d listened to it beforehand.

There was something else it reminded me of, music that had been drifting around in my head all evening. My fingers were itching for that guitar again just as he unexpectedly tightened his fingers on mine and tugged me up from the bed. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, swaying to that rhythm and smiling against my ear “You still owe me a song tonight”.

For a moment, I didn’t want to leave the bed, but that rhythm had the instruments calling me to come let them speak their sensual language and tell the world their version of our experience. Whenever people scoffed at the clichéd connection between music and sex these days, I reminded them that Bach conceived 20 kids.

We recorded the same song we’d written earlier, but it had a different feel for me now. The rhythm had become my languid heartbeat, had become Adams sated pace in my bed. The longing and depth in the sensuously entwined notes was darkly decadent, the bass line richly enveloping.

While I listened, enthralled, to the playback, Adam gathered up the written sheets of music we’d made earlier and scrawled across the top “The Taste of Blood”.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam’s reclusive vampiric existence is disturbed by a woman who needs his help, she turns out to be more than he expected. A ‘zombie’ he can’t apply the designation to… an equal he can’t resist.   
> Paging Dr. Faust

Adam continued to mix and tweak the recording while I scribbled down a new melody floating though my head, as lost in my own thoughts as he was in his. The dilated vein patterns in my pale hands eventually convinced me to head downstairs and dig through my bag for vitamins. The subdued buzz of music reverberated through the moldering walls as Adam played the latest recording again.

By the time I managed to make a clean glass of water for myself the song had ended and the house quieted. Voices drifted through the stairwell as I came back up the worn steps. Stopping instinctively, I listened to assess this new situation. Adam had a tv in the room, but it had seen better days a few decades ago. I assumed it didn’t work. When I was sure that I was indeed hearing the muted rumble of his voice, I continued climbing the stairs.

A charismatic female voice echoed through the hall, bright with interest “And how are things going with your muse, playboy?”

I’d reached the doorway to find Adam sitting on the couch, a flash of mild exasperation briefly turning his eyes from the tv before it passed and he returned his attention to it, shaking his head in wonder “Eve, this bird… she’s phenomenal. Never seen anything like her…”

Adam was talking to his tv?

And his tv was answering him… that same female voice echoing through the room again, incredulous “Truly, my darling? What is she like?”

He smoothed his fingers over his chin and smiled wolfishly “exquisite”. Eve chuckled conspiratorially from the tv “Oh, how I wish I could meet her”.

Honestly, watching someone have a conversation through an ancient tv was not the strangest thing I’d seen this week. A gentle snort escaped me.

Adam’s eyes were on me instantly.

He said nothing, but slid his lute to the other side of the couch, its vacated seat blaringly insisting I join them.

I was on the verge of refusing when Eve’s disembodied voice challenged me “Lilith… aren’t you the slightest bit curious?”  

It was the perfect enticement, chilling in its precision.

I gulped and cast my eyes to the floor. Eve was clearly a force to be reckoned with, just as Adam was. I reluctantly ambled to the empty spot on the couch, wondering just how much more bizarre this whole situation I’d gotten myself into could become. Adam smirked encouragement up at me and waited. I braced myself and sat down woodenly before reluctantly focusing on the screen.

Penetrating blue eyes immediately arrested mine. I only had a moment to try to take in her pale striking beauty and wild white-blonde hair before she earnestly exclaimed in her genteel voice “Oh Adam, she’s lovely!”

I sat there, too disconcerted to respond, but she smiled at me kindly “It’s alright Lilith, I understand the vital importance of Muses, of having a daimon. I’m a great appreciator of talent, and my darling Adam tells me you have it in spades”. Eve’s eyes still held mine, she emitted an irresistible kindness and charm.

If Adam was a force of nature, she was the watchful grace of the stars.

I suddenly felt completely insignificant.

“I must say, after what I’ve just heard, I think he’s right.” Eve turned her eyes to Adam “Your dry spell appears to be over my love”. Adam smiled at her and Eve watched him intently, clearly cherishing the expression, her yearning telling me it had been a long time since she’d seen it.

Adam breathed music, an artistic block must have been devastating for him.

My uncomfortably ridged posture was forcing the edge of the couch to dig into my legs and I squirmed slightly, unintentionally bringing her observant eyes back to me. Reading beyond my physical discomfort perfectly, she graced me with an understanding smile but her tone was firm “It’s all about the music, Lilith”.

Message received. She’d had Adam’s heart for hundreds of years, was probably the only woman who ever truly had. If fucking me was the price of Adam’s happiness for a little while, Eve was willing to pay it.

Because ultimately… I _was_ insignificant.

The realization brought my chin up defiantly. This was, after all, what I’d knowingly signed up for. I’d known from the beginning Adam loved someone, and it wasn’t as if I were looking for love myself. True, I needed money, but really I was after the same thing he was.

The music.

I was in a house filled with beautiful instruments, with a brilliant musician carrying around hundreds of years of experience, who he was willing to create with me, to teach me. All I had to do was connect with him.

Eve stared back at me, looking as if she could read my thoughts in my eyes. “Excuse not silence so, for ’t lies in thee, To make him much outlive a gilded tomb, And to be praised of ages yet to be. Then do thy office, Muse. I teach thee how, To make him seem long hence as he shows now.” There was a calculated expectancy to her watchful gaze as she recited this and waited for some response from me.

I swallowed hard and finally found my voice “Both truth and beauty on my love depends; So dost thou too, and therein dignified.” It was from Sonnet 101, an admonishment for a muse’s neglect of one’s beloved, a beloved which depends upon his muse, and upon which the muse depends.

An impressed smile broke over her face and she glanced over at Adam approvingly. My acknowledgment of familiarity with the verse, and the bit I’d chosen to recite back, subtly implying we had an understanding.

Adam smiled softly, almost bashful, and lowered his head, Eve watching him fondly. After another prolonged moment of this I stood up to escape. A brilliant and kind smile lit up her eyes as her attention came back to me. “Goodnight Lilith, very nice to meet you”.

It was a smile I couldn’t help but smile back at before I slipped from the room. I hurried down the stairs and contemplated the front door, before remembering I was committed here.

I sought refuge in ‘my room’ instead. Unfortunately I was mostly seeking refuge from my head, which I’d of course brought with me. Thoughts and feelings swirled in abundance, too chaotic for me to land on what was bothering me most.

How did two people stay together for centuries? Because the usual rules didn’t apply to them? How did I fit in? Was I technically being paid to fuck him? Was I a whore?

How could I ever look at him as anything other than her property now?

Dawn wasn’t far off and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. Years of night shifts and musician’s hours had made a permanent night owl of me, but the last few days had taken their toll. I didn’t realize I’d actually fallen asleep until I felt Adam curl up against my back and slip an arm around me.

After a drowsily confused moment in which I’d tried to melt into him, my eyes shot open and I stiffened, suddenly wide awake. Adam sighed.

I tried to scoot away subtly, turning over to my back. He propped himself up on his elbow, bracing for the onslaught as he looked down at me with those wretchedly beautiful blue eyes. The bottomless eyes of an old soul.

The question broke from me before I could think twice about it “Did you choose it?”

It obviously wasn’t what he was expecting me to say, one wary eyebrow lifting before he answered. “I was in a very dark place, and the prospect of being granted the ability to amass centuries of knowledge, to perfect my music, and experience the beautiful possibilities of the future, was tantalizing.”

His tone left me wondering if he thought immortality had been worth it, somehow I wasn’t sure he did. He referred to humanity as zombies while he lived shut up in this house. His knowledge and brilliance hidden away, wasted on these decaying walls while the world passed by, unaware.

He played with a strand of my hair, running it through his fingers while I considered his words. A similarity struck me, of another man who had made a deal with the devil for extraordinary powers and then wasted them in his suffering “Philosophy is odious and obscure; Both law and physic are for petty wits; Divinity is basest of the three, Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile. 'Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me.”  

Adam smiled poignantly at my recitation of Marlow’s Doctor Faustus, and then quietly added “all beasts are happy, For, when they die, Their souls are soon dissolv'd in elements; But mine must live still to be plagu'd in hell.” He punctuated this last bit by looking significantly at the curtained window. His smile had slowly faded as he spoke, and became altogether sad as he dropped his eyes and added the last line “Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me!”

I’d clearly hit a nerve, he looked so desolate it physically pained me. My other questions didn’t seem to matter anymore, I was fairly certain I knew who had turned him now. “Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.”

A curve of his lips wiped the pain from his face, if not completely from his eyes “It is indeed a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery.” He twined his fingers with mine and contemplated them lightly “Are you to be my Mephistophilis now?”

It wasn’t a request or an offer to turn me, Adam clearly had a disdain for making his kind. It was an attempt at levity that brought a smile to my face and I wanted to keep the same on his “I should hope to prove better company”.

The smile remained and he lifted his head off his propped hand so that he could angle his wrist down and push a stand of hair away from my eyes. It was a casual gesture at first but his eyes drifted down to my lips and his attention held there. He released my hand and reached up to cup my face as he leaned in to kiss me.

I stiffened in protest, which he ignored until I gripped his hand to pull it away and escape. He released my lips but his hands held firm while I grudgingly reminded him of Eve’s words “It’s all about the music Adam”.

His eyes roamed my face, consuming the sight of me, as if I were vital to his being “Right now, you are the music”. He breathed me in just before his lips softly touched mine. Coaxing until I responded… and then he claimed, with an intensity that had me clinging to him. Calming the chaos in my mind more than anything else could. When he finally pulled away and searched my eyes I knew he saw my doubt had fled.

We talked, about nothing and everything, till we fell asleep.

He slept in my bed that day, fingers still entwined with mine when I woke in the afternoon. I had to go into the next room, a dingy little bedroom, and open the curtains to ascertain some concept of the time. The sunlight was beginning to slant over the neglected houses and wildly overgrown yards, sunset only a few hours away.

Remembering Adam’s warning, I carefully reclosed the curtains, wondering if every vampire myth I’d ever heard was true. I shook off the heavy thought; there was a lot to do before sunset.

A few hours later I returned with the fruits of my labors… well with a little help from Adam’s money and his car. After I’d snagged a shower and some more money, I managed to imitate Adam’s process from yesterday so I could disconnect the car and drive it to the store.

The tag engraving had taken longer than I had expected so I didn’t return until just after sunset. I’d had to bribe the guy to stay open and finish it while I shopped next door, but it was important to have.

As I carefully pulled the car into its normal resting place, a figure appeared in the headlights. Long powerful legs becoming visible first, as I inched the car into position, slowly illuminating the rest of his tall sinuously muscled frame. His legs spread in an authoritative stance, hands firmly on hips, irritation visible in every line of his bearing before his face even came into the light. When it did, Adam’s darkly murderous eyes were only briefly visible before reflecting the bright glow of the headlights.

I killed them, anxious to banish the unsettling effect, plunging us into darkness.

Sitting dumbly behind the wheel while my eyes adjusted, I was suddenly reluctant to leave the comparative safety of the car. We sat staring at one another, long after my eyes acclimated to the dark.

Adam’s foot began to tap expectantly.

The gesture struck me as humorous, reminding me more of the man and less of the animal. I killed the engine and watched his silhouette stalk through the tall grass to my door. He jerked it open and glared down at me.

His eyes had gone dark again.

I felt a flutter of fear in my belly. Fingers like iron wrapped around my upper arm and he tugged me from the vehicle, bringing me crashing against his chest. He was breathing hard, his eyes rapidly examining me before he ran his hands over me, as if assuring himself I was really here.

I had no idea I could upset him so much, his distress more upsetting to me than his ferocity, and I managed a whisper “I’m sorry Adam, I didn’t mean to be gone so long”.

His eyes settled on mine and his breathing steadied some. He said nothing but ran his thumb up my cheek, his eyes still wary as he wrapped his fingers around my wrist with his other hand. He leaned into the car, possessively verifying it was unaltered before he popped the hood to connect the cable again, tugging me along with him as he went. When it met with his approval he grabbed the bags from the car, easily lifting them all in one hand while still firmly holding my wrist, and pulled me into the house.

He didn’t rant, didn’t demand an explanation of where I’d been, didn’t berate me for taking his money and his Jag. He just dropped the bags and shoved me against the door, hands pinning mine above my head, breathing savagely against my mouth. I could feel him struggling for control, his muscles trembling with the effort.

He still had enough blood in his system to make him more dangerous than weary. I’d unwittingly done more than just anger him, I’d set off a cascade of emotions that had aroused his instinctive side, made his already significant hunger harder to suppress. Unsure which impulse he was fighting, and getting the distinct impression he might not be winning the battle, I decided to channel his fight towards the less lethal option.

I tipped my chin up, bringing my lips against his, kissing him hard and deep. His reaction was instantaneous, his lips devouring me in the manner I preferred. His grip on my wrists was viselike as his hard length pressed against me.

His other hand tore open the front of my shirt, the material rending loudly over our arduous breathing. He pressed his bare chest against me, his ribs dominating what little space my chest had left to occupy, squeezing me against the chill glass of the door with every breath they drew in.

I wanted to run my hand over that silky smooth skin, explore the planes and dips of those muscles. I tried to tug my wrist from his grip and his hands clamped down brutally, making me cry out against his mouth. As soon as I stilled he eased his grip and I understood. He was master right now, and not being allowed to touch him was my penance. _Touch the fire, get burned._

His lips trailed a hot path down my throat and over my chest until he found my nipple. Rubbing his lips across it as he brought my arms down, but only so that he could twist them up behind my back, the slight warmth of his arms was searing against my glass chilled skin. His grip on my arms made my back arc, forcing my breasts out, presenting them to his ravenous mouth as his lips roamed over them.

The air against my nipple seemed painfully icy after the heat of his mouth, and I moaned in pleasure when he returned to it, the cold sharpening his heat so that he was a tongue of fire caressing the sensitive peak. He turned his attention to the other breast, making me moan at the sensation of dual ice and heat as he passed back from one to the other. He switched my wrists back to one hand and slid the other around my waist and up my stomach to impatiently grasp my breast while he brought his lips back to mine. He pinched the nipple, making me gasp again. I felt his wicked smile against my mouth and his hand began to slide down.

I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until it was suddenly pushed from my lungs as Adam quickly ducked down and slung me over his shoulder. Seconds later I impacted the mattress in my room, hard, bouncing slightly before I scrambled back.

It wasn’t an attempt to escape him, it was a ploy to keep my hands out of reach, so that they were free when he joined me on the bed.

And he knew it.

He spun and grabbed a catline string from the table in the hall, just outside my door, a feral grin stretching over his face as he approached the bed with it. Before I could tighten my grip on the ornate iron vines that made up the bedframe he snagged my ankle and yanked, flipping me as I slid back across the bed toward him.

My hands were behind my back again in a flash, as the thin soft catline began wrapping around my wrists. Years of restringing instruments made his hands nimble at the task. The binding was loose enough not to hurt, but the knot held.

He leaned over me and tenderly gathered my disheveled hair away from my face, trailing kisses up my spine and over my cheek. He paused to look at me, ragged breaths shaking him as those dark untamed eyes watched mine for any sign that I was unsure. I twisted my head, bringing my lips up to his, and kissed him brazenly, giving his lower lip a nip before he slipped his fingertips into the waistband of my jeans and glided them down my legs.

He nudged my legs apart with his knee as he wrapped his hands around my hips, tugging me down to the bed’s edge. He took me roughly, wrapping me in his heat as he leaned over me, hands grasping, breathe harsh, issuing deep throaty grunts in response to my panting moans, tugging my hair when he wanted better access to my neck, gripping my neck gently with his large long fingered hands when he needed to pull himself back from it.

He burned, he smothered, he danced over my skin, he stung, he had me lost in a smoky haze of pleasure sharpened by the suggestion of danger and pain lurking just beyond but contained.

I came hard, my muscles burning from the spasms that tore through me. He followed shortly after, a feral growl that heightened until he fairly howled my name. The first word to pass his lips since I’d laid eyes on him tonight.

He braced himself above me, a hand on either side of my head, while he caught his breath and calmed. When his breathing was more even he tugged the catline off my wrists and lifted me as he climbed on the bed, turning me so that I was wrapped in his arms as he lay beside me. My face was nearly buried in his chest as he tucked my head under his chin, reverently stroking my hair as he continued to calm himself.

I said nothing, just rubbed my fingers over his skin, enjoying the touch that had been denied me while I listened to his breathing evening out. Eventually a gentle kiss on my forehead let me know that the firestorm was banked.

But his dark eyes told me he needed blood, and there was nothing else I could do to help him unless we paid a visit to Watson. “We need to get ready Adam”.

He released me with a lingering kiss before heading upstairs. I threw on some clothes from my dwindling supply and rushed back out into the hall to gather up my bags. A few minutes later he came down wearing the scrubs, which fit him as well as scrubs could. I was fussing with the fridge, trying to plug it in. Adam glanced over at the cooler of groceries I’d bought myself and sighed in annoyance. A few minutes later he had a cord run and I removed his books as the fridge hummed to life.

I’d brought in a few other things I’d bought on my trip or collected from my bag earlier. The engraved tag, an antique doctor’s bag, and a stethoscope lay on the nearby table, waiting to complete his disguise. Adam picked up the tag and read it pensively “Dr. Faust”. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as I took the tag from him and he watched me with a reflective smirk while I pinned it to his lab coat.

“I also thought you might like this, I picked it up at an antique shop” I indicated the doctor’s bag, it was just the right size for the canisters.

Adam cocked his head derisively “hmm, and why did you think that?”

I pressed my lips together to subdue a smirk and slowly rolled my eyes, indicating the room around us, before cocking a brow at him “I can’t imagine where I got such a notion”.

Another smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth “Was the stethoscope part of the deal?”

I sobered immediately “No. That was my grandfather’s. He gave it to my mother when she got into medical school”.

Adam read my tone effortlessly. Knowing there was more to the story; he examined the stethoscope and waited.

“He was a doctor. He expected her to become one too. What she wanted didn’t really matter. She tried to give it back when she explained she wanted other things. He told her to keep it so she could verify her heartlessness whenever she thought of him.”

I took a deep breath and expelled the memory that was my grandfather with it. “She gave it to me as a reminder to follow _my_ heart”.

Out of curiosity I put the earpieces in my ears and the chest piece over Adam’s heart. He smiled at me mischievously, enjoying my rapt expression as I listened to his heart rate. Vampire mythology claimed he would have none; his was actually slightly faster than a humans.

I draped the stethoscope over his neck and he gave it an exploratory sniff “Don’t I get to try it out?” I bit my lip and smiled up at him expectantly.  

Listening to my heart lead to other things and after a few playful minutes I reminded him he needed to be playing doctor somewhere else tonight.

Once we neared the hospital, I started to give him the rundown. “It’s after hours so you’ll have to go in through the ER. Are you sure you can handle that?” Adam kept his grave eyes on the road and gave me slight nod. “Take the elevator on the left to the twelfth floor, there’s a supply closet across from the elevator where you can snag a surgical mask, gloves, and cap. Just keep your mask on and act like you’re supposed to be there and no one will care. Take a left at the end of the hall and look for the Hematology lab”.

The difficulties of sending a hungry vampire into a place filled with blood began to worry me “There will likely be blood on the orbital shaker, in the centrifuge, in the pipette tip and biohazard bags, on slides… are you sure you can handle this?” Watson was odd, but I didn’t want to get him killed in the transaction. Adam nodded patiently “He’s expecting you. He’s a little odd, a big horror film buff, but he needs the money… just don’t let him talk you into anything”.

We parked in the Detroit Metro Hospital’s emergency room lot and Adam slipped his sunglasses into his coat pocket. He took a deep breath and kissed my forehead before he slipped from the car. Twenty agonizing minutes later he shakily climbed back in, his erratically desperate behavior nearly panicking me into damage control mode.

He tore open the bag and a canister, downing the contents in great gulps, and I realized his urgency was a result of traversing the ER while hungry.

He finally stopped to breath and a trickle of red slid down from the corner of his mouth. A moment later he leaned his head back against the headrest in ecstasy.

“Do I need to drive?” I’d interrupted his revere but sitting in the lot was making me nervous.

A doctor climbing into his car and not driving away might be noticed, they weren’t usually keen to hang around here. Adam evaluated me for a moment and then motioned for me to climb over. There was an awkward shuffling as we exchanged positions and he sipped from the canister a few more times as I drove.

Finally sated, he sealed it and placed it back in the bag, a long satisfied sigh following as he sat back “Thank you Lilith”. He reached over and rubbed his fingers gratefully over the back of my hand before something struck him as curious “Tell me, how is it that you were able to use my car with so little trouble?”

A sly smile spread my lips “I told you my father was a mathematician? Specifically, his field was mathematical epistemology specializing in analysis of historical engineers. The, sometimes unconscious, evolution of mathematical theory in the minds of great inventors. He gained rapid recognition in the field and wrote several books on a variety of topics that held his interest, from Stonehenge to Ford. Tesla was a particular favorite.” 

My smug attitude faded as I added “Reading, and understanding, his books was a way of knowing him”.

I took my eyes off the road for a moment to glance over at his silent side of the car and found his captivating cerulean eyes pondering me.

I changed the subject as we passed the Packard plant “My ba- … my Dad worked there for a while”.

Adam glanced over at the plant and back at me, frowning cynically. I couldn’t help but chuckle, realizing what a weird thing time must be for him. “Not when they made cars, he worked at the chemical processing plant that moved in after. They don’t really do much from here anymore, but he used to tell me stories about the place”.

Adam lounged in his seat, staring at the massive plant as we passed and absorbing my aimless chatter “There was a concrete vat where they used to dump the chemicals till they could be hauled off. The workers used to say, if you fell in, it would dissolve your skin in seconds. He let me see it once, when I brought him lunch. They don’t use it anymore, but they didn’t dump it either, just left it.”

Adam watched the broken windows and spray painted walls of the building pass while I spoke. I wasn’t entirely sure he was listening until he asked with quiet curiosity “Show me?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam’s reclusive vampiric existence is disturbed by a woman who needs his help, she turns out to be more than he expected. A ‘zombie’ he can’t apply the designation to… an equal he can’t resist. Chapter 5: Stay with me

Since Adam was reluctant to be seen in public, exploring abandoned buildings became a favored pastime. Sometimes we brought a few instruments and his recording equipment along, experimenting with the acoustics of the deserted buildings. Sometimes we needed a break from the draining toll of creation, and just wandered about, talking.

Our talks were as random as they were profound, ricocheting from the deeply personal to the highly theoretical. As mercurial as hurricanes, sarcastic teasing could easily be followed by a heated debate or a tender kiss.

That was how I learned about Marie.

We were wandering through the car park of the Michigan Building, both of us aching to try out the acoustics, but this particular location wasn’t completely abandoned and Adam didn’t want to risk it. “You know, they used this lot in the film ‘8 mile’. It looked amazing on camera, but it’s even more surreal in person”.

A glance over at Adam’s suddenly closed and shifty eyed expression told me he wasn’t sure what I was talking about and I made a mental note to introduce him to the work of ‘Slim Shady’. A sly smile tugged at my lips as I anticipated his reaction.

Sensing I was plotting something, Adam’s eyes narrowed on me and I changed the subject. “I wonder what it must have looked like when the chandelier was here”. I pointed to the curved rear wall. “My gran loved this place, she used to tell me there were over fifty mirrors set in that wall, reflecting the chandeliers’ light out onto the street. It’s a shame they tried to modernize it in the fifties, they painted over the intricate gilt work, Gran said it should have been considered a crime”.

Adam followed my words with his eyes, talking in the rear wall and the empty hole centered in the ring of plaster that had once housed the chandelier, imagining the sight and recalling a time when it would have been at its height. “Hmmm, they built it in the 1920’s?”

I nodded “Gran told me it cost millions to build, something like fifty million today.” remembering who I was talking to, I suddenly felt silly explaining this. He knew exactly how much three and a half million had meant in the 1920’s.

I didn’t prod Adam very often, content to let him share what he chose to, but curiosity sometimes got the better of me “Where were you in the twenties?”

He stilled and looked down abruptly, a characteristic gesture when he didn’t want to continue a topic. Unfortunately my characteristic reaction was to dig in my heels and wait him out with silence. The familiar sigh of annoyance issued from him, bringing an affectionate smile to my lips as he finally answered. “Paris”.

I should have known, of course he’d been in Paris “During the Jazz age? That must have been incredible!”

When his eyes lifted to mine it was my turn to be rendered immobile as I watched his emotions tangibly tumble there. A soft smile flitted across his face as the memories swirled, confirming my assertion that some of the greatest music and literature of our time had been flowing around him then, but there was a sadness overriding it all that devolved into a look of outright pain before he turned away.

Adam didn’t usually turn away from me, didn’t fold in like this and hold his pain to himself, but he stood there with his hand to his lips, head lowered, contemplating the floor. My gut twisted, telling me I didn’t want to know. My instincts told me I had to.

“What happened in Paris, Adam?” my voice echoed ominously and his eyes snapped back to the present, and back to mine.

“You aren’t my first… muse, Lilith.” The pause was odd, as if he weren’t certain muse was the word he wanted, but he continued his tale without giving me a chance to evaluate the slip. He started to pace aimlessly, perusing the crumbling ghost of an era that surrounded us, more vivid in his memories than it was to his eyes, and a quiet affection filled his voice.  “My last was in Paris. She was a dancer, working with the Ballets Russes”.

 “Audacious, poised, brilliant”. He paused and his eyes fixed on a point near my feet “Marie was dedication and vision in a world obsessed with indulgence”.

I didn’t ask if he’d loved her, love wasn’t supposed to be part of the deal, love was Eve’s territory. Still, childish jealousy briefly irked me before I pushed it aside and focused on what Adam wasn’t saying.

I saw more than simple regret in his eyes, I saw remorse, hinting her fate had been far darker than just a parting of ways. My own experience with him told me he hadn’t hurt her, and turning her was out of the question. So if the vampire patron in her life hadn’t been the problem… what had?

The simple act of asking took no small amount of fortification on my part “What happened to her?”

He came back to the present again, a look of spite clouding his features until his expression was almost a snarl “Ava” the name hissed off the vaulted ceiling and pelted down around us in waves. His hands flexed as he calmed himself “Eve’s ‘little sister’ Ava.”

He didn’t require anymore prompting to continue, he seemed compelled, venting his spleen while anxiously resuming his pacing “Eve came to visit me, not too long after she’d turned Ava, and she brought her along”. His voice dripped disdain “Ava leaves death and destruction in her wake with the thoughtless abandon of a toddler”.

Questions brewed rapidly in the back of my mind. How many vampires were there in the world? Did they all know each other? Why would Eve turn Ava when Adam felt such disdain towards her, and then think of her as a little sister?

They all went unasked, I could only focus on one thing...

Adam’s former muse had died at the hands of another vampire.

The very arrangement I was now in had resulted in some beautiful soul’s death, just for being in his company. Now she was just collateral damage that couldn’t tell her secrets anymore, secrets Adam and Eve had never seemed overly concerned I might not keep. I hadn’t asked what happened to a muse when Adam was done with her, and I’d tried to ignore the spectral fear that others might step in if I got too close.

Suddenly cold, I turned from him and headed back to the old Jag, wrapping my arms around myself to ward off the sudden emotional chill more than the physical one. I only made a few steps progress before Adam’s arms surrounded mine. I listened to the dying echo of my arrested footsteps and wondered how many times I was going to find myself wondering what they hell I’d gotten myself into with this man.

A little voice in the back of my mind whispered, reminding me he wasn’t a man and _that_ was the problem. I glanced over my shoulder and met his eyes, always blue now that he had a steady supply, and they were filled with tender understanding. He turned me in his arms and pulled me to him, silencing that little voice as he wrapped his arms around me and I rested my head on his shoulder, nestling my face into his neck.

He didn’t make any impassioned vows to protect me, and I didn’t make any placations of utter faith in him. He just placed a tender kiss on my cheek as we held each other. And it was enough.

Because I wasn’t just his muse, I was a fighter.

I drove us back to the house so that Adam wouldn’t have to deal with ‘the zombies’ in the all night drive through. The inconvenience of my need to eat actual food was always handled with a sigh and an eye roll, which I nearly always found humorous. It took a monumental effort not to grin as he scrunched down in the passenger seat while I placed my order. His arms crossed resentfully in front of his chest, his sunglasses on despite the dark, staunchly staring out his window while I paid for my food.

I pulled a few fries out of the bag, eating as I drove, and Adam reached for his flask. He unscrewed the cap and then paused to touch the small white skull he wore on a black cord around his neck.

“Does she wear one too” I’d often seen him fondle it before he drank, the gesture seemed significant so I’d concluded it must be connected to Eve. He bit his lower lip at my insight and nodded reluctantly. I reminded myself to leave the subject of Eve private and not ask about her anymore.

We passed a quaint little blue Victorian and I seized the opportunity to change the subject “Jack White grew up in that house”.

Adam leaned to look intently at the house before it slipped past and then took a swig from his flask. He leaned back against the seat blissfully for a moment, and then jumped on the new topic I’d unwittingly opened “Why haven’t you put more music out?”

I released the fries I’d been reaching for, my appetite nearly vanishing. “After I collaborated with Jack, there were other… offers. If I was willing to play the game. Show a lot of leg, show a little boob. Sleep with the manager. That’s just not my style” I glanced over at him before I added “Surprisingly”.

My teasing warded off the tempest that was his sentiments on ‘recognition’ and won a complacent smile from him instead “Why didn’t you stick with Jack”.

It was my turn to produce an annoyed sigh “Jack was great but he has a lot going on, it’s tough to keep up with a somebody when you’re still a nobody”. I made a subtle attempt to redirect the topic “You know he has nine older siblings? Only three of which are sisters. I can’t imagine…”

Adam recognized my reluctance to talk about my dismal fifteen minutes of pseudo fame and seemingly let the subject drop. So far our conversations had always been engaging, to have such a minefield of taboo topics come up in such a short period of time had us both at a loss. The scenery rattled by in uneasy silence and I realized he was doing the same thing to me that I did to him… waiting me out.

And just as he did for me, I took a deep breath and opened up. “There was a guy, Scott, sort of a coinsure of unknowns, gets around all the clubs, has a bunch of groupies that follow him around. He said he could hook me up, pass my music on to some people who could spread it around and get me recognized on my own merit. I believed him. Unfortunately, when I actually met up with his connection… he was a shit bag who led me to believe we were going to a studio and then tried to attack me in his car”.

I was struggling to keep my voice steady and Adam could tell. He flexed his hands, subduing his rising anger at this unknown man, and gently prodded “Tried?”

My lips drew back in a humorless smile “As soon as he stopped the car to make a grab for me, I broke out a window with the seat headrest and managed to pin his face against the line of glass still embedded in the door frame until he let me go”. The only injury I’d sustained during the ordeal was from diving out of the way of his car as he tore down the road and left me behind.

I could almost see it clicking in Adam’s head, why I’d been so reluctant to get in the car with him when we first met. He reached over and took my hand, rubbing his thumb over the back of it in contemplative silence before pointedly asking “Who was he?”

I scoffed but held onto his hand “Danny something… I don’t know. I’d had enough and never came back to the clubs again”.

After another brief silence Adam asked broodingly “and the guy who set it up… his name was Scott you say?”

I nodded as I pulled the car into the gravel slots through the grass of his property, anxious to head inside and forget the whole thing, ignoring the murderous gleam in his eye as he committed the name to memory.

I headed for the door and then waited on the porch while he reconnected the car. We smirked at each other as he climbed the creaky steps and I handed him the keys, silently acknowledging that I was humoring one of his old-fashioned tendencies by letting him open the door for me.

While he was unlocking it something white at the foot of the steps caught my eye “Is that a skull?”

Adam threw a look over his shoulder as he opened the door, pausing when he caught sight of the round white object. He slowly descended the steps and picked it up cautiously, giving it a distant sniff. It was indeed a human skull, sans jawbone and covered in dirt “The coyotes must have carried it here”.

My first instinct was to report it to the police, before I reminded myself that I couldn’t. I glanced around nervously, the reminder of how dangerous this place could be making me realize how at ease I had become with danger. If the vampires weren’t going to get me, the urban wilderness was. My eyes came back to Adam and a nervous laugh escaped me.

He frowned at me, perplexed “and what is funny about this?”

I shifted in slightly bashful hesitation, unable to resist an opportunity to tease him “Aren’t you going to say it”.

Adam squinted at me and shook his head in a confused request for me to explain. I cocked an eyebrow “Alas, poor Yorick?”

Adam rolled his eyes dramatically and chucked the skull far into the next yard, working to hide a smile as I walked back down the steps to join him. We set out on an expedition to poke around the house and the rest of the lot, intent on making sure there were no other bones on the lot that might call unwanted attention to the property. When we reached the back garden, Adam went up his back stairs for a moment to fetch flashlights.

My attention was on the horrifically mangled and disconnected service wiring when I heard him come back down “Adam, why does your garden hum?” Even to my own ears, it sounded like a bizarre nursery verse.

I turned around to find him smiling at me and sporting a mining flashlight “A head torch, Adam? Are you serious?” his smile didn’t dim as he waited expectantly. I grumbled internally that he knew me too well and asked predictably “Got anymore?”

He shook his head as his smile spread into a grin and he lifted a panel in the ground, giving me a peek at the dynamo producing the humming noise. A brief look around at the rest of the setup and sarcastic disbelief colored my voice “You built a cosmic-ray motor. You’re powering your house on radiant energy.” I’d come to expect the unexpected, but this…

Adam slipped the cover closed, “Yeah but I’m still sorting out a calibration issue with it”.

“A calibration issue? Like… you’re... how? And on this scale?” I’d lost the ability to articulate my incredulity and stared at him, wide eyed.

Adam gave me a smug smile, enjoying my reaction to this more than he had to any other mad revelation I’d experienced in his presence “I’ll tell you all about it, later” his tone was pacifying as he removed his head torch and took my hand to continue checking the property on the other side of the house.

The overgrown lot had a menacing feel to it in the dark, the decaying majesty of the house hulking over it threateningly in the wan moonlight. We stalked through the grass, occasionally disturbing other creatures of the night as we paced along, our progress silencing the dry rasp of crickets as we went. The persistent rolling swish of tires along the Chrysler, Fisher, and Lodge freeways never seemed to diminish in the distance.

One angrily chattering raccoon and two large hissing possums later, something dark suddenly whipped against me, grazing my hair as it flew past. I reared back and swatted at it before it headed for the broken section of roof over the neighbor’s attic.

Adam watched it go “Eptesicus fuscus”

Adrenaline was already making my heart pound hard in my chest, but this brought a shiver up my spine “I had a fucking bat with a ten-inch wingspan _in my hair_?”

Adam chuckled and I scowled at him “I’m surprised he doesn’t live in _your_ attic, Gomez Addams”.

He tried to deadpan “I don’t think they appreciate my music”.

The raised set of his eyebrows gave away his teasing and his smile nearly peeked through as he turned away to continue searching. The residual adrenaline in my system sharpened my senses, but Adam still took me by surprise when he grabbed me a few minutes later.

His hand flung around my waist, much like he’d done in the first moment I’d encountered him, but this time he turned me to face him. I crashed against his chest, suspended in his arms and gasping in surprise, instinctively grabbing hold. With one hand on his shoulder and the other along the side of his neck, my flashlight went flying across the yard behind us while I braced myself for whatever was coming.

He’d gone completely still and I stared down at him, trying not to panic and silently waiting for some explanation. The corner of his mouth pulled back in a wry smile and he turned his eyes down meaningfully. I followed his gaze and restrained a gasp.

A skunk I’d nearly confronted trod past Adam’s perfectly still boot and waddled off on its merry way, innocently carrying my aversion to rabies and horrific stink along with. “How can they be so adorable and so disagreeable?” 

Adam’s voice was softly playful in my ear “I ask myself the same thing about you every day”

My eye’s cut back to his, ready to shoot daggers at him. He was looking up at me with that smirk, the beautiful planes of his face thrown into sharp relief by the dim reach of the streetlamps, the blue of his eyes lost in the black of the night. Apparently having no intention of putting me down, his hand shifted around to my ass. My hands slid up his neck to cup his face and my heart rate sped up, pushing the adrenaline already in my system further along.

It was a sudden and deep kiss, the slight coppery sting telling me his teeth had caught my lip just before the ferocity of his need confirmed it.  I was nearly breathless by the time he finally released his grip and I slowly slid down to regain my feet before he let me catch my breath.

“Mmm, I know what we’re gonna record tonight”. His voice was decadently sensual and breathy against my neck; I wanted to melt into it.

A distant echoing scream broke the silence, unnervingly high pitched and wailing, it was immediately drowned out by the howling of coyotes. Adam scowled into the darkness and I pressed myself closer to him for a different reason then I’d done a split second earlier “Do you think it was a Fisher?”

Instead of answering he took my hand and set out for the door. Another coyote howled nearby and he paused beside me to glance back around again. I stepped closer to him and glanced back too “You know, I’ve never heard so many coyotes around the city as there seem to be here…” my eyes turned up to meet his and I clarified my point “around you”.

Adam wrapped a protective arm around me and threw one last cautious look over his shoulder as we headed into the house.

Wanting to shake off the gooseflesh from that scream, I went straight for the bright comfort of his laptop while he relocked the door. When he came upstairs he found me hard at work and gave me a suspicious look from the corner of his eye as he continued to his bedroom. Eventually he came back out in the dressing gown I’d bought him during my last grocery excursion. I’d developed a habit of spontaneously browsing antique stores for things Adam might like.

I peaked at him over the screen of the monitor as he headed for the rack of guitars behind me and he gave me another curious glance. “What are you up to?’

I turned the monitor so that he wouldn’t see it “It’s a secret”

He turned his head to look back at me with a concerned frown while he picked up his lute instead “What kind of a secret?”

I hedged with a mischievous grin “Uh… a secret art project”.

He smiled and parroted the words back to me teasingly “A secret art project?”

“Um, hm.” smiling at my screen, I continued to work for a few more minutes until he left the lute on the couch and brought me over to write with him.

A few hours later we’d recorded an aural interpretation of our dark escapade outside. His stalking pace navigating an urban meadow in search of a corpse, the hulking darkness hanging over us, the menace of the unknown in the air, the sexual tension our adrenaline had brought on, the eerie keening wail of coyotes in the distance.

I finished my notations and handed them to Adam for the finishing touches. He was scrawling ‘ _This Is Your Wilderness’_ over the top of the page as I was heading back to the laptop.

When he set aside the music sheets I smiled an impish invitation at him and he shook his head in amusement “Secret art project, right”. He sauntered towards me with cautious curiosity and I waited till he was seated beside me on the couch, his hand casually slipping between my knees, before I turned the monitor towards him.

Predictably, he groaned at the glaring ‘You Tube’ logo above the video and I gleefully hit play on the first of a series of tabs I had ready before I snuggled up to him.

First I played more recent Detroit legends, including Marshall, before we moved on to songs that were just personal favorites of mine. I skipped the eighties and most of the nineties, they didn’t seem to be to his taste. Then I went back to the fifties and sixties.

“This song is crazy, but it was playing at a party when my Mom and step dad met and it kinda became their song, I have a lot of great memories wrapped up in it”. The raw raspy voice of Wanda Jackson filled the room and Adam looked intrigued. “They always used to say love was like a tornado, once you’re caught in the funnel, you’re powerless against it”. Next I played my stepdad’s favorite song by Charlie Feathers, he had a thing for rockabilly music.

Adam and I had stretched out on the couch while we listened to the succession of songs, he toyed with the melodies on his lute while I practiced running my fingers over the frets of my temporary guitar. Eventually he laid his hand over my hip and we just sleepily listened, the music occasionally punctuated by the horn of a train carrying in the distance. He had Wanda on again when I dozed off.

I woke a few hours later to the sound of gunshots somewhere outside. Though the rapid popping could easily be mistaken for firecrackers, the timing and the disciplined crack of the echo was instantly identifiable to me. Adam roused sleepily, clutching my hip where his hand still rested. A few more shots brought his head up quickly from the back of the couch and his lute slid off his lap.

He looked over at me, bleary confusion mixed with jumpy instinct, and I nodded confirmation that I’d heard it too “That wasn’t far”.

I stood up and walked to the curtains as Adam moved cautiously to the other side of the room. I peeked out carefully, trying to avoid being seen or allowing too much daylight into the room. “I don’t see anything… it must have been a few streets over”.

I methodically closed the gap I’d made and turned back to Adam “They’re getting awfully bold to do that in broad daylight…”

Adam paced around for a few minutes, repeatedly checking the outside camera monitors, but no more shots followed. Predictably, sirens didn’t either.

Stiff from the couch, I headed back downstairs to my bed, outfitted now with red Egyptian cotton sheets in place of the dusty moldering bedding I’d first slept on. I stripped out of my clothes and slid under the silky sheet to stare at the crown canopy, too keyed up to fall back asleep, worrying about the fact that I was becoming far too familiar with living in constant danger. That kind of lifestyle took a toll on a person. If the humor with which I’d reacted to the skull was any indication, it already was.

Adam shuffled into my line of sight, his eyes full of storm clouds, disturbed by the proximity of thugs to his sanctuary. The moment he saw me, he recognized the strain I was feeling and his lips compressed in a sympathetic sulk. He walked around the bedpost, out of my peripheral vision, and the new black velvet drapes that hung from the canopy shifted as he ran his fingers over them. I heard his robe land on a chair and the bed shifted and groaned slightly as he climbed in.

Once he was settled and staring up at the canopy with me, he took a deep breath and spoke with playful challenge “Name the greatest of all inventors.”

I couldn’t help smiling at his obvious distraction tactic, and then pretended to consider my response seriously before I declared “Accident.” Nothing like a little Twain to lighten up a situation.

He smiled smugly at the canopy, as if the answer had been some inside joke between us, and tried another distraction “You mentioned your father wrote about Stonehenge?”

“Yeah, he had a theory on how they brought those stones in.” My answer had been quiet and preoccupied, my mind reluctant to let go of other thoughts.

Adam paused and sat up on his elbow, actual interest filling his voice now “What do you mean, brought them in?’

His genuine curiosity pulled me away from my gloomy thoughts and into a discussion “People believed those rocks had healing properties and brought them all the way from Maenclochog in Wales, nearly 200 miles away. He theorized they used a rig system of rails and stone ball bearings to move them.”

Adam frowned “Why did they believe they had healing properties?”

I couldn’t resist grinning at him for this part “Well, they’re lithophones, they make a distinctive sound when you strike them. The town they’re from translates as ‘ringing rocks’. People thought they had mystic powers”.

His lips pressed together again, this time in a bemused smile as he thought about musical rocks.

I couldn’t resist the opportunity to tease a vampire “I take it you weren’t around for that”.

His smile became self-depreciating “I’m not that old” then faded completely as he started to say something else and thought better of it. He laid back to stare at the canopy again.

Eve... He wasn’t that old, but maybe Eve was. If that was the case, had she turned Marlow?

Marlow, now there was something that I wanted to get to the bottom of “Why is she in Tangier with Marlow, rather than with you?”

He sat up again, his finger sliding across his lips contemplatively as he hedged “Marlow is particularly dear to her”.

I cocked an eyebrow at him, implying the man before me should be what is most dear to his wife. His finger slid down his chin as he sighed and tried again “He speaks to her heart in a different way.”

Resentment flared at the absentee woman who’d claimed his heart and let it languish. Having gotten to know Adam, I could see how heavy his loneliness had been weighing on him when I’d first arrived. I was more than just a muse now, I was a companion. I was also becoming uncomfortable with how much I needed a man whose love I could never have.

I told myself I just didn’t understand how an immortal partnership worked, reminded myself that everyone needed to be able to pursue their own diversions; it wasn’t healthy to live in each other’s back pocket.

Till death do us part. What happens when death never comes? I guess immortals require bigger diversions.

Despite my attempts to validate it, Eve’s insistence on staying in Tangier and Adam’s reluctance to do so, told me there was something bigger going on here. Some sort of disconnect between them.

I mentally sought the source for an answer, scouring my mind for works attributed to Shakespeare after Marlow’s ‘death’. A song by Feste in Twelfth Night stood out to me. “O mistress mine, where are you roaming? O, stay and hear! Your true love’s coming, That can sing both high and low”.

Adam’s eyes became as pensive and sad as a wounded puppy and I knew I’d inadvertently hit him where he lived. I didn’t have the heart to finish the lyric as I watched him anxiously fidget with his long refined fingers in awkward silence.

I thought about his justification that Marlow connected with Eve in a different way, Eve who could count her age in millenniums. How many magnificent specimens had she seen and chosen to gift with immortality, rather than watch their genius slip away from the world? Surprisingly few. I only knew of perhaps three, one of which I was fairly certain had been a mistake, a moment of weakness atoned for by choosing to turn her.

Marlow had the ability to walk the same earth as Eve for eternity and yet she still sought out his company above others. I thought about my brief encounter with her and tried to suss out what she would treasure so much. What had stood out to me most about her was a sense of intense curiosity, about everything, even human nature. The answer clicked in my head like a sliding fifteen puzzle, the picture it formed perfect in its clarity.

“You’re the music, he’s the words”.

I couldn’t hide the note of resignation in my voice as I looked up at him “Science and essence, sensation and speech. Your imagination and his compassion”.

Adam watched me for a moment, his eyes narrowing and his head rearing back slightly at my bluntness, his ego wounded as if this comparison somehow implied he was lesser for not being all things. I stroked my fingers over his cheek and softened my delivery “I appreciate words Adam, but I don’t need a fount of them. They have their place, but there are other paths to truth that are just as direct and beautiful ‘There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres’”.

A softly indulgent smile touched his lips and he answered like with like, quoting Pythagoras back at me as he changed position, rising up on his knees and leaning over me “Number _is_ the ruler of forms and ideas…” he smiled at me wickedly “and the cause of gods and daemons”.

I pulled him into my arms and proceeded to show him, with a look, with a touch, with the rhythm of heartbeat and breathe… that words weren’t always necessary to connect with someone’s soul. That you didn’t have to articulate what you’re feeling, to share it.

Our kisses were soft and savoring until he pulled back to look at me, his eyes dilating with desire, darkening seductively. His fingers traced gently down the side of my neck and he followed the motion with his eyes, taking in every detail of me as his feather-light touch traveled all the way down to my leg. Emphasizing how bared to him I was, heightening the tension as I wondered where he would settle.

He continued down my leg and his lips brushed the sensitive skin along the inside of my ankle before creating a luxuriating path of kisses, pausing at the inside of my knee before he continued on to the inside of my thigh. He raised his eyes to mine, and seemed to stare straight into my soul before he brought his lips to my folds and kissed me. He didn’t break eye contact with me, pinning my hips with his large hands when I bucked, telling me I was his without words.

He had me stimulated to the point that his slightest breath made my muscles clench involuntarily and my legs trembled helplessly. When I couldn’t restrain myself, I raised him up and rolled him to his back, pinning him. I looked just as deeply into his eyes while I mounted him, and he allowed me to, his hands roving over me, his body straining as deeply as he could into mine, and his eyes assenting that he was mine.

There was nothing between us in the dark except the silkiness of the red sheets, the softness of the black velvet drapes, the straining of our bodies, the smooth glide of our dampened skin, the fevered panting of our breath.

Actions did speak louder than words could, and we both made our message implicit, without ever speaking a syllable of it “Stay with me”.

When I came it was overpowering and gentle, all at the same time. I didn’t reach a climax so much as I melded into him, every molecule of him suddenly becoming infinitely precious to me as I cradled him in my arms and was cradled in return.

Completely spent, I fell asleep swiftly, twisted in the sheets and wrapped in his arms. Just as I hit the threshold of consciousness I heard Adam’s low, yet awed, whisper at my shoulder, issuing another line from Keats’s ‘Lamia’.

 “Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam’s reclusive vampiric existence is disturbed by a woman who needs his help, she turns out to be more than he expected. A ‘zombie’ he can’t apply the designation to… an equal he can’t resist. Chapter 6: Revelations

The doorbell woke us after nightfall. Adam sat up abruptly “Fuck!” and scrambled for the robe I’d given him. He issued a curt “Stay here” over his shoulder as he closed the door behind him. The tension eased from my muscles as I realized there was annoyance in his tone, not true urgency.

When I heard the front door open I realized it could only be one person, a muffled “Adam, I got that thing you wanted man.” confirming it was Ian. I fought the urge to see my old friend while listening to the cadence of their footfalls on the stairs.

I didn’t follow orders often, but Adam’s situation was too precarious for me to risk putting him in jeopardy. Ian probably had a lot of questions about his reclusive client, questions that Adam’s intimidating nature and money kept at bay. If he found out I was here, my every interaction with Ian would become a potential minefield.

Moving around the room quietly, I gathering the things I’d finally unpacked, preparing for a shower. A glossy black and white eight by ten photograph slipped to the floor from the dresser and I looked down at my face with contempt. It was a musician’s version of a headshot, one I’d been told was necessary when there had been a whisper of possibility for a career.

I left it on the floor and stared out the window while I waited, contemplating stars that seemed brighter than usual in the moonless night. Stars had become a particularly heavy subject on my mind of late, they always seem to remind me of Eve, and tonight they filled the clear sky. Timeless, beautiful, bright, observant… and far away, another quality they shared with mysterious Eve. She was an ocean away in the rich culture of an ancient city surrounded by her precious words “I am a drunkard from another kind of tavern. I dance to a silent tune. I am the symphony of stars”.

Their footsteps returned, and again I restrained the urge to say hello, remaining by the window until I felt Adam’s arms wrap around me, his body pressing up against me as he rested his chin on my shoulder and followed my gaze. It was a sweet moment, one I regretted spoiling with my curiosity “What secret treasures did Ian bring you tonight?”

Adam’s chin slipped off my shoulder as he tipped his head forward, burying his lips against my skin, his low voice vibrating through me. “A little extra security”.

His words had been muffled, but I’d understood him clearly enough. He’d felt the slight stiffening I couldn’t hide and elaborated “I called him while you were getting ready for bed yesterday. Do you know how to use one?”

Glancing down to his open palm as he brought it around me, I quickly closed my eyes at what I’d somehow known would be lying in it. A thirty eight.  I nodded reluctantly.

“I’m going to take a shower” I’d fled the room before he could say another word.

Adam was nowhere to be found as left the shower, toweling my hair dry as I headed back to my room. There was a note on my bed, written in his elegant scrawl “Gone for supplies”. The gun gleamed dully on my pillow.

Picking it up reluctantly, and suppressing a flood of irrational anger, I flipped open the cylinder. It wasn’t loaded. I glanced around to find a box of cartridges on the nightstand. I thought about loading it, and instead tossed the gun onto the floor below the bed, the dense metal thudding heavily against the wood as I flopped onto the mattress.

It quickly became apparent to me that these were not thoughts I wanted to be alone with so I began wandering the house. I ended up in Adam’s room, where I was startled by the familiarity of my own face looking back at me from the mantel between Burroughs and Poe. He’d taken the headshot from my room and framed it while I was in the shower.

I sat on the bed and stared at the photograph for a long time, overwhelmed that he had placed me here, where I was so ridiculously _out_ of place. My eyes wandered to the other portraits on Adam’s wall of tribute, my new connection to them making me think a little deeper about each of them. Saddened that their inspiration seemed to be failing him as their fates outweighed them.

How much of an influence had Adam been in their lives? I knew from the incredible stories he would regale me with that he had known many of them personally, a glance at Wollstonecraft reminding me that in some cases he’d even known them intimately.

And had known her children as well.

He’d been teaching me to play the lute and I was engrossed in it. His enthusiasm, when I’d proved to have a knack for it, had combined with my fascination and resulted in us both being overly single mindedly and tenacious about my lessons, staying up long past dawn. We were lying around on the couch listening to a storm outside, taking a much needed break while he massaged my aching hands, when he told me about the occasion.

He’d leaned his head over the back of the couch, stretching out the kinks from hours of looking down at my hands while he showed me techniques. A dim glow permeated the heavy material of the curtains as rain poured down for the third day in a row. “This kind of rain always reminds me of Mary” the late hour and his arched neck gave his low voice a gravelly quality.

Though I was always a rapt audience for his stories, I’d assumed he meant Wollstonecraft, and was not eager to add to the unquashible spark of jealousy brewing in my heart. The clear disinterest in my “Um hm…” brought a smug smile to his face, evident in his voice. “Not that Mary, her daughter.”

“I spent an incessantly rainy summer with her, Shelly, and Byron, at Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva”. He lowered his head from the couch to look at me, enjoying the incredulous expression he’d known would be on my face and teased “An occasion during which our appetite for ghost stories inspired her to write her infamous novel on The Modern Prometheus…” he playfully adopted a spooky whisper “Frankenstein”.

Many enduring works had come from that notorious occasion, but it was another novel in particular that jumped to my mind. “ _The Vampyre_? He got the idea for Lord Ruthven from you?” Adam grinned mischievously, but didn’t say anything. It was my turn to roll my eyes and shake my head. The very novel that had inspired the popular fascination with vampires over the last two hundred years, including Stoker’s “Of course Dracula would lead back to you…” He grinned haughtily at my assertion.

I thought about asking if he’d been the actual Lord Ruthven of Scotland, but he was so pleased with himself he was already on to his next tale. I let it drop and enjoyed his stories instead. I also didn’t bring up the conspicuous lack of Eve in them.

Thinking of her again brought me back to the present and my gaze wandered to her bedside photo, but his open safe caught my attention instead. I’d been in it before, just to grab cash when I needed to shop, but I kept meaning to take a closer look.

Pulling it wide to let the room’s light fall on the inside, I looked over the messy lot. There was a myriad of currencies there, as well as credit cards, passports, and other more precious items.

I left the tapes untouched, innately knowing they were probably intensely private. I knew he wouldn’t care if I looked at his passport, so I flipped it open and chuckled immediately at the choice of name. Stephen Dedalus, James Joyce’s antihero, his surname a nod to the cautious father of Icarus.

Had Adam chosen the alias? Something told me he had “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake”.

The feeling that I wasn’t alone brought my attention to the doorway, where I found Adam watching me, his eyes intense. For an embarrassing moment I was afraid he was upset that I’d invaded his privacy, but something about the look in his eye as he took a deep quiet breath felt like acknowledgment and told me it was my words, and the uncanny insight behind them, that had given him pause.

While he stowed his supply I scooped up the ID, credit cards, and money, placing them back in the safe with more care than Adam usually showed them. I often came across random bills lying scattered and forgotten in the house. After closing it I perched at the edge of his bed, still the most contact I felt comfortable with presuming, and contemplated his wall of portraits again.

When he’d changed out of the scrubs he joined me, a greeting kiss pressed to my shoulder before he quietly prompted “What comes to mind when you look at them?” His tone was pessimistic; hinting it was not only a difficult question for him to ask, but something he was resigned to being misunderstood over.

Neither of us mentioned my portrait there, and I ignored it, answering with the first thing that had come to mind when I’d looked at his portraits the night I met him. “A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men”. His guarded expression had softened as I quoted Plato.

I looked back at the portraits “They shared their gifts and dedication with the world, even when they weren’t recognized for it, or when recognition wasn’t what they expected it to be. Here they’re recognized, and they serve as warning, reminder, and inspiration”. I could feel his eyes burning into me, and for a moment I was reluctant to look at him, afraid of being overpowered by what I might find there.

When I turned my head I realized I should have been more afraid. One look into those soft blue eyes, wide and glistening with a level of veneration I’d never seen, and my heart seemed to constrict in my chest and block my throat at the same time.

A flood of the tenderness I’d experienced yesterday returned as his arms wrapped around me. Only this time a painful battle with my heart ensued as Eve’s picture watched us from the nightstand, her arm entwined possessively with Adam’s, her bridal gown mocking me. Reminding me that he could spend a lifetime with me, but eternity would be hers.

“What is the problem with the gun?” he asked the question as a soft whisper, his change of subject demonstrating that he read me as well as I read him. The sound of crickets and owls outside the house filled the silence, overridden by the constant drone of the freeways in the distance.

I finally said “I understand the need for it…” and left it at that. He ran his hands up and down my arms comfortingly, but didn’t press me any further. I changed the subject again. “It’s my turn to decide what we’re going to tryout tonight”. Adam’s eyebrows rose with interest.

Thirty minutes later we’d dragged up the necessary equipment and were standing on the roof terrace with our guitars, staring at the bright stars.

We played around with dive bombs and effects overlaying softly strummed repetitive notes until we’d obtained the sound we’d both been looking for, a longing otherworldly mix echoing in an untouchable and distant yearning that silenced the incessant crickets and nightlife around us. An eerie contemplation of the timelessness of stars spinning in the night sky.

We set the playback for repeat so we could sit and listen. I remembered an old lounge chair up here somewhere and went looking for it, but the only light reaching the roof tonight was coming from the stars. The railing was broken in places and I’d nearly stepped off the terrace onto the steep roof slope, or so Adam told me when he pulled me into his arms.

Not realizing the danger I’d been in, I handled it rather calmly. Adam was shaken though, his arms iron bands around me and his breath coming in slow puffs against my hair. Slightly embarrassed at my clumsiness and not wanting to spoil the relaxing atmosphere we’d made, I tried to smooth over the incident with a kiss.

A long slow savoring kiss that he responded to as I ran my hands up his abs and over his pecs, letting my thumbs slide lazily over his nipples as they passed. My hands continued their journey up the sides of his neck, my thumbs savoring the sculpted line of his jaw, until my fingers slid into his hair.

He responded hesitantly at first, the jolt of nearly loosing me still holding sway, much more real for him then it had been for me. Then the restrained savagery that was always below Adam’s surface rechanneled his distress into desire.

His grip loosened and his hands began to slide over me, breathing me in as lust undermined his efforts to catch his breath. He twisted my hair in his hand and deepened the kiss, until I was as breathless as he was. He moved his lips to my neck while I caught my breath, slipping my clothes off while I fumbled with his.

The soothing quality of the music was a heady blend when combined with the darkness and danger around us. In the arms of a vampire, on a decrepit rooftop, where anyone could see us should they hear the music and look hard enough. The vast ceiling of stars above us seemed so much more tangible with the music playing… we had an audience, even if it wasn’t the neighborhood.

I knelt down before him to remove his soft brown trousers, looking up into his eyes once he’d stepped out of them, sliding my hands up his powerfully muscled thighs as I rose up on my knees. He stood spread legged on the roof for all to see, a specimen of darkly exquisite magnificence under a dome of stars. When my lips touched him he threw back his head and moaned with abandon.

I took him to the point that he was hissing with restraint before he knelt before me, his hands guiding me to lay back while his mouth explored and his fingers traveled. It was my turn to cry pleasure into the night while he set fire to my skin in the starlight.  

He finally pulled me up into his lap and filled me as he began his rapturous rhythm. I alternately clung to him, and leaned back. Beads of sweat on his torso cooled in the air and contrasted his skin’s warmth like a scattering of cool fire when he pulled me back against him. The experience was heady, our public abandon somehow making it more private, an intimacy that others might see but only we could truly experience. We were in a world of our own, making love with the abandon of eager rule breakers.

Adam shuddered against me as we cried out in ecstasy and collapsed, bracing himself so that he wasn’t too heavy. Holding me close and kissing me tenderly once we had caught our breath. A few minutes passed and I realized he was reluctant to let me go. He seemed to recognize it at the same time I did, and took a fortifying breath to say something… no words came. He rose up instead and pulled me to my feet.

We got dressed quietly, Adam helping me find my clothes before flinging himself onto the decrepit lounge chair. I cringed, sure that it would collapse, but it held his weight as he regarded the stars pensively.

I left him alone with his thoughts and went downstairs. I had a knack for knowing when he wanted to think since I often felt the same way, and I was good at finding ways to entertain myself.

Sometimes I practiced, or read, or composed. Sometimes I played around with stuff, adding to Adam’s habit of randomly sticking up clippings that meant something to us. I smiled as I passed the one we’d actually made ourselves.

I’d left a crappy project I’d done on a whim with craft paint laying on the floor to dry and Adam had stepped in it. Before he could do much more than give me a highly annoyed look I’d held up my finger and stuck my own foot in it. He’d raised an eyebrow at me, wondering what I was up to now. A few minutes later I had imprints of our vermilion colored feet side by side and we were drawing on them, turning our footprints into T-rexes. I’d titled it “dinosaur footprints” and Adam had hung it in the hallway. It was the first time I’d heard him laugh unreservedly.

I resumed my journey to my chosen form of entertainment for the rest of the night, Adam’s laptop.

Lately I’d been teaching myself about blood. Not just drawing it but evaluating it. I’d made friends with the techs in the lab and on slow nights they would teach me, when they were busy and I wasn’t they would let me help out with the things they’d shown me. I wanted to expand on that.

Because a quiet fear had taken hold of me… that someday Watson might fall through. It had turned my interest into a compulsion.

I woke Adam’s laptop with the intention of doing some studying, but the numbers in the corner of the screen stopped me cold. I’d lost track of the date. An easy thing to do in my surreal and disconnected situation, but disconcerting nonetheless because I’d nearly missed it. The fact that I’d seen it in time didn’t feel like a coincidence, it felt like a reprimand.

Closing the laptop almost immediately, I grabbed the car keys instead “Adam! I’m going out for a while”. I’d yelled it in the direction of the stairs to the roof and was startled when his voice answered nearby “Shall I come?”

I’d spun around to find him standing behind me with a channel strip in his sleekly muscled arms. My tone had already tipped him off that something was up, but the concern in his expression grew as I stood there staring at him, torn between wanting him to come and being unused to sharing this with anyone. Concern deepened into a worried frown and he set the channel strip aside with a sigh, pulling me closer as he straightened.

He reached up and stroked his thumb over my cheek while he waited; his eyes seemed to see what I couldn’t say. My decision became disconcertingly easy and I turned for the door, tugging his hand to bring him with me.

My knuckles gripped the steering wheel, emanating tension while I guided the car down the empty streets. Adam seemed to understand I was wrestling with something and didn’t push me for an explanation. It was a short drive, our destination only ten minutes away from his house.

Adam had been looking out the window with interest at the area, something about the way he held himself suggesting he was familiar with it, but hadn’t seen it in a while. Not surprising… Ford, Studebaker, Cadillac, Dodge, and Regal Motor had all had plants just down the road on Piquette since nineteen eighteen, some had burned down, some were museums, some were just rotting, but all were closed.

He finally spoke up, revealing it had actually been music on his mind as we drove through the area “I once saw Billie Holiday perform back there, at the Flame Show bar”. When we were turning onto Hastings Street he added “I spent a lot of time in Paradise Valley too...”

Black Bottom had been legendary for the blues, big band, and jazz that had come out of Paradise Valley. In the early sixties the city displaced the residents with an ‘urban renewal project’ courtesy of the federal highway act, and had all but wiped it out. Joni Mitchell’s lyrics on it ran through my head ‘ _They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot’_ but I said nothing. My uncharacteristic lack of response finally pushed him to ask for an explanation “Where are we going?”

A different sense of nostalgia was taking hold for me “To visit baba”.

Adam’s head swiveled around to look at me. His eyebrows raised, his eyes curious. It was the first time he’d heard me call my dad by the term of endearment.

I drove under the railroad bridge slower than necessary, the hulking shell of Fisher Body plant 21 came into view suddenly, looming over the end of the street like a pale phantom. I stopped in the middle of the road to admire the lovely mural to my left at the base of the stamping plant.

Street artists had painted children sleeping, dreams of children with Icarus-like wings soaring through the night sky above the sleeping children, flying towards the open doors awaiting them. The words ‘Soar higher and higher, dream big’ written above them.

Adam’s eyes were on me, waiting “He’s here?”

Appreciating the much needed prompt, and yet loath to proceed, I sighed and turned into the driveway on the right “In a manner of speaking”.

I parked the car in the middle of the driveway. The plant was closed for the day and no one would be coming to the lot right now. I turned off the engine and climbed out, walking onto the lot while Adam came around the car. He crossed his arms and leaned his long lean frame against the hood, keeping a wary eye out for trouble, letting me pace around the poorly lit lot without reason. Memories were washing over me and I needed a minute with them before I could give him an explanation.

When the memories I didn’t want began to take hold a little too vividly I finally spoke up, my manner so detached it was almost businesslike. “My father died on the way back from Istanbul, he’d been studying Alhazen and they were taking an impromptu tour of the Mediterranean on their way back to Oxford. They were in Spain. My mom didn’t get on well with his family back in London, so she just… stayed in Spain for a while. She married my stepdad before she came back home to Detroit”.

Adam’s head came up, as I spoke, listening with intent expectancy, is interest somehow eroding my ability to remain detached about it. Detachment was the only way I could get through talking about it.

I started to pace again, pacing helped “He raised me as his own, took care of me while my mom was always off working at the university, shared his love of music and literature with me, supported us when my mother got laid off.”

Just thinking of him brought a proud smile to my face “He could chase the work because he could be anything, a carpenter, a machinist, a galvanizer... anytime a plant closed he’d move on to the next one, just pick up a new trade and work his way up”. I shook my head, forever astonished at his relentless brilliance and devotion.

I sobered as my surroundings pushed away happy memories “He was working here” I indicated the stamping plant directly across the street with a curt upwards nod “when I turned eighteen”. Feeling my composure beginning to crack, I pushed on with my rambling, dancing around the heart of my story while Adam waited patiently “Workers park here”.

I waved and indicated the crumbling grain elevator behind me “My dad told me it caught fire in nineteen sixteen, third one left in Detroit” I swallowed hard “Whenever I was waiting to pick him up from a shift, I’d walk that colossal bucket belt in the back like a tight rope… drove him crazy”. Another smile drifted over my face at the memory, but my façade cracked a little further too, my eyes beginning to sting.

“He missed my birthday party, picked up an extra shift he couldn’t refuse, so we were gonna grab a bite when he got off.  He’d already given me my present earlier… tickets for Hamlet”. The corner of Adam’s mouth lifted in appreciation for what might have been an unusual gift for many teenagers.

“See, it was the book we were on, the one we’d been ‘appreciating’. That’s what he used to do, he’d pick some work that he loved and would insist on inundating me with it for weeks with background, plays, movies, discussions and say we were ‘appreciating’ what great talent had to offer us.” Adam smile was sadly eloquent as my penchant for quoting things was explained and I quietly added “He had a soft spot for Keats”.

I turned back around to face the grain elevator “I got here early so I climbed the belt to wait for him up there” I indicated the corner of the rusty railings still intact around the roof “Just to be a shit and enjoy the way he would pretend to be exasperated with me” My smile faded and I swallowed hard as staying impartial became impossible “tell me I was taking years off his life”.

Adam reached out and took my hand, bringing me back to face him. Even darkened by the scant lighting, the quiet compassion in his shadowed eyes held mine as he waited to hear the rest “He didn’t come out when his shift was up, I watched the rest of his group leave and I was up there for another twenty minutes.” I toed at a pebble “Turns out he was sticking up for another guy who got hauled in to the supervisor’s office, trying to help him keep his job.”

After a deep breath I leaned against the car hood too, eyes fixed on the place I’d been that night “the guy came out, and somebody hiding there” another nod indicated a dark doorway opening into the side building of the granary “came out and mugged him”.

My voice started to crack “I called 911 and that’s when I saw my dad, coming out of the plant…”  I shifted to lean against Adam, playing with his gloved fingers as an excuse to look down “My dad knew how to fight, he’d been trained since he was a kid, he could take on anyone. So he didn’t hesitate to step in… even though I was begging him not to”.

I let Adam’s fingers slip through mine so tears wouldn’t land on his gloves, and he shifted to wrap his arm around my waist. “The first guy was down, but he’d been putting up a pretty good fight so the mugger pulled a gun to finish him off… a thirty eight special.” Adam’s arm suddenly tightened around me in understanding and I lost all pretense of control over my shaking voice, guilt making my words a rushed and rambling mess “Dad might have been able to sneak up on him, but I knew he hadn’t seen the gun and I yelled to warn him… instead I just tipped off the mugger that he was there.”  

Hearing the loss of control in my voice helped me rein it back in, cold resignation taking over “By the time I got to him, there was so much blood on the ground. I begged the operator to hurry, but I think I knew it was going to be too late… we both did”

“He tried to reassure me, told me it was alright, made fucking jokes from Hamlet ‘What, frighted with false fire?” I was trying to stop the bleeding and I didn’t find it funny.” I still felt a sort of lenient annoyance at the awful joke. A scoffing attempt at an ironic laugh followed “He was still speaking Hamlet right up to the end”.

I finally turned to look at Adam again “The last thing he said to me… “Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungallèd play. For some must watch while some must sleep. So runs the world away.” The words had been poignantly chosen. Acknowledging his time was over, pleading for me to go on unscathed by this loss, and reminding me that the world would go on as it always has, even without him in it.

Adam pulled me into his arms. My tears had run out, but I took great comfort in his embrace and his soft understanding. “Was it tonight?”

I nodded “This is the only place I can visit him. His family insisted on bringing his body back to be buried in the family plot. My mom didn’t put up a fight. She couldn’t handle it, moved in with my grandfather. We don’t really talk much anymore”.

Adam let me sit in silence with my thoughts for a while before he drove us home. I was exhausted and went straight to bed while he finished sorting out the equipment he still needed to put away.

Suddenly the power failed and I stumbled out into the hall to see if Adam needed help. “Adam!” My foot caught on something and I nearly fell. Reminding myself that I was likely to be more hindrance then help, I proceeded a little more cautiously, sliding my hands along the wall when I could. My slow progress made the darkness seem more intimidating when he didn’t respond.

“Adam!” again there was no answer. I had the feeling I might be close to the stairs and extended my toe in front of me, sliding it around to see if I could make out the bottom step. The unnatural silence of the hall began to give off a dark oppressive feeling, building it into a tangible danger pressing in on me. I didn’t normally spook myself, but something felt very wrong.

Something brushed against me and I spun “Adam?”

A playful voice suddenly giggled near my ear “Adam’s not here”. I spun again and struck out, but my hand passed through the air without contacting anything and the echoing giggle came again. I froze and tried to calm my breathing so I could listen for anything coming toward me.

The voice toyed with me. “Adam’s gone to get more of the good stuff”. There was no warning before her hand impacted my throat, slamming me against the wall. She whispered poutily in my ear as she pinned me “I’m just not sure I can wait when there’s so much good stuff here already”.

The lights came back on just in time for me to see her catlike face, fangs bared as she came for me. She buried her teeth in my throat and I slid down the wall helplessly as my life drained away into her greedy mouth. All I could do was scream one last time while her grip tightened on me “Adam!”

“Lilith I’m right here!” Suddenly her arms were Adams arms and I found I could struggle against them after all. The sincere confusion in his eyes stopped me cold and I brought my hand up to my neck. There was no blood. I looked around the room as the last veils of my dream lifted away, revealing I was safe in my bed.

I snuggled into Adam’s arms, trying to catch my breath. He held me tight, and the vivid danger of the dream began to fade, leaving me feeling like a silly child. Adam’s voice was not the reassuring tone of one addressing a silly child when he spoke into my hair; it was full of worry “What was that about?”

“A woman” I corrected myself “A vampire…” relief brought a stunted laugh bubbling up “She reminded me of a lion.”

Adam pulled back to look at me and the dark apprehension in his eyes brought some of my fear back. I clarified “she had hair like yours and Eve’s, but brassy colored...” My explanation trailed off as the look on Adam’s face put a name to my nightmare.

Ava.

I shook my head at him, denying the possibility “How could I dream about someone I’ve never seen?”

Adam’s clenched jaw was not reassuring.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam’s reclusive vampiric existence is disturbed by a woman who needs his help, she turns out to be more than he expected. A ‘zombie’ he can’t apply the designation to… an equal he can’t resist.  
> Chapter 7: A little fun

As unsettling as the nightmare had been for me, its effect on Adam had been worse. I woke most evenings to find him watching me closely, an intense worry in his eyes, tempered by a soft smile when I came to. Even in my bleary state, I tried to hide the clinging residue of fear the nightmares left me with so that he wouldn’t suspect. Repetition had dulled the terror and replaced it with deep unease. I knew I was dreaming, but I couldn’t get her out of my head. Truth be told I wasn’t sleeping much to begin with, I’d taken to making day trips while Adam slept, so that he wouldn’t see through my reassurances, wouldn’t catch on that Ava’s face was there every time I closed my eyes.

Adam had told me that, in the sometimes seemingly endless morass of an immortal’s perpetuity, the sudden appearance of another in their dreams was believed to be an attempt at contact. A result of being in their thoughts, of being sought out, a connection… it was the only explanation he could give me when I’d been able to describe, in perfect detail, someone I’d never laid eyes on before.

The murderer of Adam’s previous muse was curious about me… dauntingly so.

I’d taken to spending my days seeking out rare treasures in rundown shops where I wasn’t likely to bump into anyone I knew. Hunting for things I thought Adam might also appreciate. It was a good pastime for distracting us both from my sudden insomnia. Conceding to his distaste for Youtube I’d located forty-fives of my parent’s favorites, and also some that were personal favorites of my own. I was most proud of the B-side treasure by blues queen Denise LeSalle “[Keep it Coming](http://marvelousmindloki.tumblr.com/post/95800458642/denise-lasalle-keep-it-coming-i-dont-care-where)”, a song that seemed to speak to our strange situation and put a smile on my face.

Adam had taken one look at the title and headed for the sofa while I slipped the needle onto the record. I turned to find he’d unexpectedly moved the sofa and table back out of the way and cleared a space in the middle of the floor. We were both grinning impishly when we met in the middle of the room.

“May I have this dance m’lady?” he teased, his close proximity undermining his decorum while southern soul and an irresistible beat filled the room. Denise crooned the first verse of the song “I don’t care where you go. And I don’t care who you see. Just as long as you Baby, maybe, dumb enough to see you with me.” Adam smiled down at me through the strands of dark wild hair that shadowed his face, anticipation shining in his ageless eyes. He didn’t begin the dance by taking me by the hand, instead he grabbed me by the waist and pulled me up against him.

Denise continued “And you keep it comin’ like I like it. Keep it comin’ like I want it. If you keep it comin’ like I need it. It’ll be alright”. Adam surprised me, lowering his stance so that I was straddling his muscular thigh and swaying back and forth to the beat with him, his smiling lips a breath away from mine.

I instantly recognized the style of dance, every girl that had seen a certain notorious romance film set in the early sixties was familiar with it, but I’d never done this with anyone. We were all loose knees and grinding hips, driven by the beat as I wrapped my arms around his neck and enjoyed the play of muscles pressed against the length of me “I want you to be happy, Baby, and do just what you wanna do. But keep it comin’ like I like it”.

He dipped me backwards and swung me around in an arc while his hand kept my hips pressed firmly to his “You got the kinda lovin’, That keeps me in a dream, baby”. When I rose back up he pressed his forehead to mine, his blue eyes burning despite his impish grin, his hips working magic against mine “Aw, Honey when you turn me on. I don’t know what the word ‘stop’ means. So keep it comin’ baby!”

We carried on, smooth yet dirty gyrations occasionally accompanied by kisses, dips, and giggles, until the end of the song approached. Adam worked our way over to the player, still embracing me while he reached over to set up the next song. When he started to flip the record I instinctively reached out and stilled his hand. Much as I enjoyed the innuendos of the B side, the A side was currently hitting a little too close to home for me to share with him right now.

Instead I’d reached for the other album I’d managed to snag, Little Willie John, another Detroit legend. I set the needle and cocked an eyebrow as the scratchy silence filled the air. Adam waited expectantly and a grin slowly spread over his face as the heavy brass notes of ‘[Fever](http://marvelousmindloki.tumblr.com/private/98572426707/tumblr_mko553mkKW1qzmvp7)’ prowled through the air, punctuated by a snapping beat and Willie chanted “You never know how much I love ya, never know how much I care…”

His hips resumed their slow sinful circling sway against mine with the skulking beat and as Willie sang “When you put your arms around me” Adam pulled me close, my breasts pressed against his chest and the friction of our movements teasing them to heightened sensitivity. No longer playful, his eyes shadowed with desire and his lips were on my neck by the next verse “You give me fever when you kiss me” and the hot flush of my skin that accompanied his lips had me truly feeling that ‘Fever’ Willie was going on wholeheartedly about.

I ground my hips against his arousal and gently dragged my teeth over the lobe of his ear, making him hiss in response. He tipped his head back, irresistibly presenting the soft skin and corded muscle of his neck, and I couldn’t have stopped my lips from exploring if I tried. He moaned deep in his throat, the gravelly growl sending a charge through me that made my knees a little more wobbly than the swaying grind of the dance required.

He brought his head back up and lowered his chin to focus on me, dark hair falling around his pale face, blue eyes shadowed to sapphire and intently focused on mine, jaw slackened and mouth slightly open to pull in a pleasured breath, savoring me. I forgot to breathe in that moment and my knees were barely supporting me until his lips descended on mine. Then I was straining toward him, trying to breathe him in whenever his hungry lips briefly relented.

Unable to withstand the grinding assault, I could feel him already hard against me, the bulge straining against his dark jeans. The playful seduction of the first dance was gone, there was fevered purpose to our movements now. He tore at my shirt and I briefly paused in my fumbling with his belt to slip my arms out of the restraining material.

I managed to slip the belt off while his lips went straight to my breasts, teeth grazing roughly over my nipples before I reached into his open jeans and stroked his length. After a sharp intake of breath his mouth returned to mine and his fingers returned the favor. Mine forgot their purpose as he expertly worked those long gifted musician’s digits, making me throw my head back in ecstasy. His lips grazed over my neck and I could feel his self-satisfied smile as I reached up to loop my arms around his neck in a distracted attempt to steady myself.

In one fluid motion, an unconscious demonstration of strength and speed, he pulled me up against him and lowered us both to the carpet, his hand cradling my head to protect it from the mild impact and then tangling in my hair to bring my lips back to his.

He pulled back for a moment to remove the last of the clothing separating us and then plunged into me, making me arch my back completely off the carpet as I raised my hips to meet him, a strangled gasp of pleasure erupting from me.

His rhythm matched the song, unhesitating, purposeful, determined, and I rose up to meet him for every plunge. Hips twisting sinfully, exploiting every angle, his rhythm finally sped up when the song ended and the scratchy silence of the spinning needle was lost in our heavy panting breaths and periodic grunts of pleasure.

The pleasure built to a pleading pressure quickly then. He watched me intently and a wicked grin announced his intent just before his fingers stroked me right where I needed it most. His touch triggering an overwhelming orgasm that tore through me relentlessly as I felt his pace falter and capitulate to his own shuddering release. His desperate exclamation cracking roughly through the room and drowning out the echoes of my own cries of pleasure as his hips slammed into me “Fuck!”

He’d collapsed and lain braced above me while we caught our breath, occasionally bestowing gentle breathlessly hasty kisses on one another, but rose up soon after, conscientious of my uncomfortable position on the floor. After restoring the sofa to its usual place we laid back drowsily, still trying to catch our breath.

Adam toyed absentmindedly, one hand with my fingers the other with my hair “How many other people your age would have sought out Little Wille John over Peggy Lee?” and smiled wickedly and kissed my fingers.

My slightly embarrassed smile drew his eye and he waited for an explanation “Jack said something similar to me”. Adam smiled encouragingly clearly curious; I hadn’t told him much about my brief collaboration with Jack.  “We’d worked out what we were going to record and were all set to go, when the control room had an issue. We were doing a multitrack recording and playing most of the instruments ourselves, so there was just he and I in the studio while we waited”.

I squeezed his fingers, remembering how hard my hands had been trembling “I was anxious and the delay was making it worse so I tried to keep my shaking hands busy and of course my nervous frame of mind brought Little Wille’s ‘I’m Shakin’ into my head, so I was playing around with the hook”.

Adam huffed an ironic laugh, familiar with the intuitive way my mind worked

“Jack recognized it immediately and we started talking about how many artists had covered Willie, with way more recognition then he had ever attained” Adam nodded solemnly “and how Peggy Lee had redone ‘Fever’ partly with her own lyrics, but they became the basis for all the other remakes over the years, where Willie’s original work is pretty much forgotten”. Remakes outshining his contributions became a hallmark in Willie’s brief career; even the Beatles had covered him.

I tried to bring the subject back into light hearted territory “Made Jack laugh when I did my best imitation of hard living bluesy Willie singing Peggy’s Jazzy Romeo and Juliet reference”. I gave Adam a taste of it “Fever, yeah I burn forsooth” that had him laughing against my neck and I teased “We moved on to Bo Diddly before they fixed it, but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation”.

Adam continued to laugh against my neck and I relished his enjoyment. All teasing aside I’d genuinely enjoyed my unique experience in that studio “He’s a smart guy, Jack. I’m glad I got the chance to work with him”.

My words petered off as I thought about all the artists Adam wasn’t getting the opportunity to influence, closed up and cut off in this house. He’d been lonely too long when I’d met him, hiding behind a wall he’d built around himself. I felt privileged that he’d let me in that wall, but also a sadness for the gifts he could have shared with the world, even if only by collaborating with other artists.

That was Adam’s great tragedy, artists needed to be able to tap into the creative pulse around them, some way to commune with other creative spirits who understand what drives them. While there was a great appreciation for those who esteemed their work, nothing woke up the spirit of an artist more than someone who truly and deeply spoke their language. While I fully believed Eve was an excellent appreciator, I was pretty sure she didn’t fulfill that aspect, even when she was with him.

And so, here I was.

I sighed and stroked his cheek, making him look back up at me, no trace in his bright eyes of that lonely stunted dissatisfaction that he’d emanated in his cutoff state when I’d first met him. Was his distance from Eve helping or hurting him? Was she justified in allowing him room to connect with a musical muse, or was it convenient so that she could play muse and coinsure to Marlow?

My thoughts must have been plain on my face, Adam reach up and stroked his thumb over my cheek “Lilith…don’t”. I watched him for a moment, wondering what he meant. Don’t be hard on Eve? Don’t overthink what we have? Don’t ruin the moment? Don’t fall in love?

I was trying not to, with all the strength one can muster when battling the inevitable.

I turned my gaze away and stared at the record player, LaSalle’s A side drifting through my mind, despite my unwillingness to play it earlier…

_What has this man got? He makes me feel, what I don’t want to feel._

Always one to either ignore something completely or pick at the wound, I asked “You said she was older than you are…” I turned back to those captivating eyes “how much older?” He didn’t react, other to cast his eyes down and calmly answer “She was a druid”.

A scoff I couldn’t restrain escaped me “That explains a lot”. He smiled with a sad sort of pride, understanding my meaning. Druid use of oral history and training to memorize poetry was legendary. It was no wonder she was attached to the world’s greatest bard.

I impulsively turned around and flicked on the tv, settling into Adam’s arms to watch whatever came on screen, but I couldn’t quite cover my aggravation. He watched me thoughtfully while a documentary droned on about ‘the man who saved geometry’ Benoit Mandelbrot.

Anxious to prevent him from continuing the subject, I distracted him with the one the TV was offering “You know, since his book came out, they’ve even found fractal patterns in healthy heart rhythms, blood vessel layout, retinas. It was staring us in the face all over nature and nobody put it together till he wrote about it”.

Adam’s eye’s drifted from me to the tv, and I wasn’t sure if he was truly taking the bait, or gently letting me drop the subject of Eve. He snuggled me against him, absently playing with my hair, and sighed “It’s been theorized to explain the relationship between mass and energy use in animals”.

At some point this conversation became a lively debate on incorporating fractal sound into algorithmic composition, turning pink noise into music. The discussion continued well into daylight, until Adam stepped into a crack of early morning sunlight peeking through a gap in the curtains.

His reaction startled me, his words cut off in a hiss followed by a blur of motion as he evaded the beam’s touch, a stream of curtly issued expletives issuing forth with the rising smoke off his shoulder. I hurried to close the curtains completely, hoping that I hadn’t been the one to leave them that way.

He rigidly sat down on the sofa and I got a good look at the charred wound, seared bloodless tissue laid open clear down to the bone, then watched in horrified fascination as the wound quickly healed itself without assistance. The smell of burned flesh in the air and Adam’s pained expression the only evidence that it had happened.

Once it faded completely he glanced up at my worried face and tugged me down to lay beside him. The implications of the situation were still whirling through my mind and after I’d anxiously rechecked the perfectly healed flesh Adam reassured me he was fine with a thumb gently brushed over my cheek. I laid my check on his chest and listened to his even breathing as he fell asleep.

It was late in the afternoon when the nightmare struck. I woke up resignedly and glanced around at the scene I’d closed my eyes on only a few hours ago. After checking Adam’s arm again, wondering if I’d dreamt that too, I remembered there was an estate sale I wanted to check out today. One look at Adam’s sweetly sleeping face made me want to curl up with him again, and I nearly did, but the prospect of experiencing another murderous vision from Ava decided me against it.

I ended up finding a treasure halfway across Detroit that made me glad I hadn’t missed out.

I’d never met Ol’ Paul but he’d passed away a few weeks ago and his ‘estate’ was being sold off by a man who had little patience or skill for the task, and even less idea what to charge in a resale shop that had never seen a price tag. The ancient owner had a soft spot for instruments, and tucked away in a dusty corner I found a pristine Gibson I was sure predated the 1930’s.

Gibson had been a Mandolin maker and one of the first to carve guitars with an arched rather than traditional flat shape and they did so from one solid piece of wood, no braces or constructed rims to affect the interior resonation. The guitars were not particularly pretty on the outside and their appeal was easily missed by an amateur, which luckily the shop owner had been or else the guitar would have been in a private collection somewhere.

The estate salesman wasn’t aware how old the guitar was, but getting him to part with it hadn’t been easy. He’d watched me like a hawk while I’d browsed and noted my momentary freeze when I’d spotted it. My interest in it had tipped him off that it might be valuable and despite my fair offer he found himself suddenly reluctant to sell. I’d witnessed Ian bargain often enough that I’d finally convinced him to give it over, but I’d returned to the house well after dark.

As I pulled up I spotted Ian’s car parked out front and I casually made the block, parking under a broken streetlamp around the corner until he left. I re-parked the car in its usual spot and slipped into the house with the guitar behind my back, hoping to surprise Adam. Instead I turned from quietly relocking the door to find him waiting in the entryway.

Luckily I’d still had the guitar in front of me and I awkwardly shifted it behind me as I turned to face him. I had to grin at the way he was standing, hands behind back and hips shifting warily, a perfect imitation of my own attempt to hide something.

In the months since the gun, Ian had brought Adam more than a few odd treasures and I’d come to look forward to them, this promised to be an especially good one. “So, what did Renfield bring you this time?”

Adam had been smiling in anticipation, but my sense of humor made his shoulders droop dramatically as he closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose while he groaned at me “Lilith…”

When he raised his head a smile was still teasing at the corner of his mouth, and he couldn’t hold it back for long, tipping me off that my hunch was right, he had something really good. He rarely looked so pleased and tense at the same time. A nod of his head indicated what I was concealing “You first”.

I found myself worrying that the Gibson wouldn’t compare and reluctantly pulled the guitar from behind my back, avidly watching his expression change to one of amazement as his eyes fixated on the guitar, wonder in his voice “Is that… is that an L-2?”

I grinned so hard the muscles in my cheeks protested “You’d know better than I would, but it’s the oldest Gibson I’ve ever seen. Beautiful, isn’t it?” I could tell he was aching to touch it, had even begun to reach a hand out to do so, then remembering what was in his hands and holding back.

He smiled self-consciously “I, uh… had something made for you, Ian picked up the package for me this afternoon”.

The head and neck materialized from behind him as he slowly brought an exquisite guitar into view. The warm wood tones of it glowed in the light like a vibrant river of honey and flame. My eyes devoured the ivory inlays, the workmanship… it had clearly been made by a master, and I recognized the familiar material immediately…“Cocobola?”

Adam smiled at my quick identification of the wood “To replace the one you lost”.

I stepped forward and kissed the corner of that smile “Thank you Adam”. His delight at seeing my genuine gratitude, and pleasure at receiving a treasure of his own, had him hesitating like a shy child, head dipped down, eyes repeatedly peaking up from the guitar to mine, a bashful smile playing at his lips. Guitars changed hands, while he dropped a sweet and lingering kiss on my lips.

We drifted wordlessly upstairs like enthralled children with new toys. The tv was playing and the haunting call of whales greeted me as I entered the room. I looked to Adam for an explanation and he sheepishly admitted “I don’t sleep much while you’re gone”. I guardedly waited for an accusation or chastisement on my avoidance of sleep, but he just smiled and added sarcastically “Actually there have been some very entertaining supernatural documentaries”.

Happy to keep the subject off my dreams, I teased him about ghost hunters while we explored what our new additions had to offer. As always the mood inspired the music and hours later we’d recorded a hauntingly simple song, an eerie composite of the subject matter inspired by the documentaries he sometimes mindlessly watched during his solitude induced insomnia.

In a creative burst brought on by the new instruments, I cocked an eyebrow and challenged Adam “I write you, you write me?” A thoughtful grin spread slowly over his face and his eyes lit up at the simply phrased request. We each took guitars and a sheaf of paper into our rooms and emerged less then an hour later with matching grins.

Adam picked up his lute to record ‘me’ first and I sobered as he lifted the elegant instrument, surprised that he’d picked this to represent me. When he began to play I discovered that our harmonious minds were in sync over more than just giddy smiles that evening. A slow contemplative melody of elegant simplicity shot through with pregnant pauses issued forth. It was unhurried, honest, gentle, yearning, thought provoking, and then he underlaid it with a meandering electric guitar, which undulated from sensually brazen and demanding strength to a lost and echoing contemplation.

While the finished recording was enough to take my breath away, it wasn’t until I began recording my ‘Adam’ piece that he got the full effect of his composition’s impact on me… because they were eerily similar. The lute melody was nearly a reflection of his, but I’d underlaid it with a carnally creeping sensual accompaniment. Low bass, guitar, and a slinking beat gave it a darkly haunting power, a mysterious, apprehensive, brooding nature which eventually overwhelmed the lute completely.

We were curled up on the couch in the dark listening to them, contemplating how the music translated and connected us without words while he ran gentle fingers over my cheek and my hair. The subject I’d been dreading came unexpectedly “When was the last time you slept the day through?’”

Deliberately mistaking his meaning, I leaned in and softly captured his lip between mine before adding coyly “well you do tend to keep me up quite a lot”. His lips slid into a smile and he ran his hands up my arms to pull me close for more, but the worry hadn’t left his eyes and I wasn’t taking any chances that he might get stubborn on the subject. Standing up from the couch I abruptly announced a desire to continue the earlier paranormal mindset of the evening “why don’t we head over to Temple street?”

A series of emotions passed over his face, desire jarred into confusion, before settling on intrigue. I knew Temple street would tempt him, and I could tell from the look in his eye that he had something in mind already. My skin tingled in anticipation.

Five minutes later we were in the Cass Corridor, once a trove of hotels, restaurants, and well-to-do apartment buildings attracted by the world’s largest Masonic Temple back in the nineteen twenties, Adam peeked up through the windscreen at the massive building as we passed it and added conversationally “they set the cornerstone with General Washington’s trowel, just like the Capital Building in DC”.

I raised my eyebrows at the Temple, which was now a glorified theater “Jack mentioned it’s the second largest stage in the whole country” a fact his mother had picked up when she’d been given a job as an usher there while struggling to find work. “I hear it’s headed into foreclosure for back taxes”.

Adam’s brow furrowed and his lips pinched into a line at the news, but one short block later he was concentrating on pulling into his destination, the Alhambra flats. I was nervous about parking the Jag here, but he pulled onto the vacated lot of a demolished building behind the boarded up apartments, leaving the car in the shadows of the overgrowth.

We quietly walked around to the sidewalk, Adam keeping a sharp eye out for trouble while I looked up at the imposing stone face of the building. It had beautiful Romanesque architecture, a rectangular base that rose into turret shaped corners, the first few floors were all white stone and arched openings, its large curved windows tightly boarded and barred, its entrance sealed with cinderblocks behind the ornate iron surround of the doorway. The upper floors were made of a more conventional design, square windows set in pink-tinged beige brick. Despite the streetlights, the building had an unnervingly spooky feel to it.

Adam turned to look up at the fire escape with me “They were built in 1895 as upper class apartments. Firestone himself was one of the earliest residents. Best view of the area with the least amount of possible trouble to run into”. Despite his assurance and the visible precautions against the outside world, more so than most abandoned buildings around here attempted, some of the upper windows were open and graffiti artists had been hard at work on the entrance and the fire escapes.

In one quick and smooth motion Adam lifted me. Mildly startled, I quickly realized his intention and latched onto the fire escape ladder as it came within reach. He cautiously released me and I was surprised at how easily the uncared-for hinges extended, my weight lowering the ladder until Adam could reach it and bring it all the way down. He cautiously glanced around again, but the ladder had made little sound and we hadn’t drawn any notice.

We made a quick climb to the roof, hoping to remain undetected. Adam went first, holding my hand and guiding me to step where he stepped, his eyes more capable in the dark then mine could ever be. He led me around crumbling chimneys and numerous skylights, some of which were broken and opened into light courts that dropped straight down seven floors into the basement. The traitorous footing made me increasingly nervous until we reached the low cornice along the edge of the roof overlooking Temple Street.

Brick red mansions sat abandoned and nearly completely incased in a voracious growth of ivy, like shipwrecks obscured in coral. Fires had claimed many of the rundown buildings, what remained was a large homeless population, a reputation as a red light district, and some gruesome ghost stories.

I’d lived not far from Temple Street as a kid, and as children tend to do, we’d regaled each other with the rumored ghost stories of the area at every sleepover. “It certainly wins points for spookiest atmosphere”.

Smoky and sexy in the shadows thrown off by the streetlights below, Adam smiled mischievously at me and stepped closer, slipping an arm around me, his voice low and husky in the dark “Well, I would have toured the Temple with you, but it’s a little more difficult to sneak into. I hear Mr. Mason is rather busy there”.

I scoffed and he grinned in response, kissing my neck before sobering and turning back to the look over at the parts of the Temple visible around the abandoned Hotel Fort Wayne “they say he threw himself off the roof when his money ran out and his wife left him”.

Genius architect George D. Mason had built the Temple in the 1920’s and its construction was said to have driven him into bankruptcy. Stories maintained he lead a retinue of ghosts among the lavish maze of hidden doors, furtive stairways, secret rooms, and even a secret floor that comprised the massive eighty seven thousand square feet of the Temple building. There was a gargoyle like stone rendering of him on the facade that had always creeped me out as a child.

Reluctant to diverge onto the subject of absent wives, I continued the game. “All right then… ghost stories” My eyes traveled over the once lavish nineteenth century homes, many of which had caught fire, even as much as thirty years ago, and had not been repaired or occupied since. Memories of ghost stories were jarred by nearly every building my eyes landed on.

I pointed at number fifty-two, once a Victorian servant’s quarters “They converted it to apartments in the fifties, but they never could keep residents long. There were regular sightings of a little girl and an old man in the third floor window”. I squinted and leaned into him to point out the small window in question “No one seems to know who they might have been, or stuck around to find out”.

I pointed a little way down the road, at number forty six, a once elegant mansion also converted to an apartment building. The roof over the front turret had dissolved in a fire a couple years ago leaving the charred joists jutting up like the bare poles of a teepee. “That one was notorious for a few of its previous occupants, but mostly for being the residence of a serial killer. He left behind several bodies on the property… they went undiscovered for years”.

A slight shudder ran through me and Adam grinned indulgently as he pulled me closer “Hmm, I wonder if you’ve heard the story of this one”. His lashes briefly lowered to indicate the building beneath our feet.

I smiled in anticipation “Everyone tells stories about this place”. The building had developed such a creepy reputation, it had been featured on lists of buildings purported to be ‘Detroit’s Most Haunted Places’, but I’d never heard the same ghost story twice, nor heard the actual origin story for its reputation.

Adam stepped away from me with a wicked grin, tugging my hand to follow him again. We made another nerve wracking journey over the roof to the low brick surround of the rooftop exit door, painted the same garish red as the rest of the area and covered in graffiti. He pressed a small flashlight into my hand as he wrenched the door open. As the echoes of its noisy protest died away he clasped my hand again and stepped into the utter blackness of the stairwell.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam’s reclusive vampiric existence is disturbed by a woman who needs his help, she turns out to be more than he expected. A ‘zombie’ he can’t apply the designation to… an equal he can’t resist.  
> Lilith and Adam explore an abandoned building with a dark history, and then things get really creepy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Alhambra Flats are shown in a deleted scene (Adam walks by the building facade) and in the background while he and Eve are walking together, descriptions of the inside are based on photos of the building interior taken by abandoned building explorers. The incidents referenced did actually occur in the building shortly after its construction.

I couldn’t stop myself from pulling back ever so slightly as the darkness swallowed Adam and he towed me along into it. He paused and brought me to his side, his irresistible voice soothing away my hesitation, his breath on my ear as he spoke quietly and stayed close “In 1905, the cook in this building, a woman by the name of Rose, was furious about being demoted to scrubwomen by the building residents.”

We descended a short set of stairs and I did my best to trust his guidance and not stumble. They let out into a long hallway lined on both sides with windows that allowed just enough moonlight in to make out their shape and the surprising length of the shadow filled corridor before us. Long tattered sheers drooped from the high windows and occasionally drifted and trembled in the slight breeze admitted by jagged cracks in the panes of glass. Creepy didn’t even begin to cover it; all I could think of was every scary hallway scene in every scary film I’d ever watched.

This was worse.

Adam suddenly stopped in the hallway, listening intently. I stayed close and waited, trying not to freak myself out. After nearly a minute of this he uttered a distinctly worried whisper “Lilith?”

I couldn’t answer; my throat seemed to think closing up was a helpful response to this inquiry while I worried what he’d heard. He wrapped an arm around me and gently pulled me against his side in an embrace, lowering his head to quietly whisper into my hair “Breathe”.

I tucked my face into the hollow of his neck in relief and the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding for nearly a minute came out in a shuddering hushed laugh. His chest shook with quiet amusement, then his fingers traced reassuringly over my back while he resumed his silent vigil. When he was satisfied that he didn’t hear any movement in the building, he clicked on the flashlight in my hand, and I sucked in another breath as the beam illuminated the expanse before us.

The upper walls and ceilings were a faded shade of cranberry, still beautifully regal despite the patches where water damage had crumbled the plaster and exposed the lathe wood below. The wainscoting on the lower walls and around the heavily molded window and door frames exuded a stately elegance. This substantial amount of woodwork was all carved from a mahogany so deeply red it was almost black, the lacquer still reflecting in the harsh beam of my light, shining defiantly in the decay. The floor was undecipherable beneath decades of dust and the clutter of abandonment.

Despite its once impressive beauty, it was still incredibly creepy.

The moonlight on both sides of what had to be an interior hallway had a disorienting effect on me until I remembered the skylights on the roof. The twin light courtyards pierced straight down through the building and into the basement, flanking this hallway, the common stairs between floors located at the end of the hall.

Adam set out for them slowly, still keeping me close beside him, his smooth low voice forebodingly casual at my ear with the dark tale I’d almost forgotten he’d begun “So one morning, in the building’s dining room, Rose serves her best biscuits to all the tenants and their families”

The end of the hall opened up in three directions, one leading to the rooms, one to the stairs, and a third to a maintenance entrance. Adam took the lead again and tugged me towards the rooms. Despite our stealthy movements the floorboards creaked with the slightest motion and our footfalls seemed to thud loudly through the hushed building.

The first room we entered was nothing like I expected it to be and I looked around in awe. Either because the exterior was boarded up so well, or because the ghost stories had kept them out, the usual salvagers hadn’t gotten to the place and everything was remarkably intact.

The rooms remained as they were left, the original built-ins, ornate moldings, and antique furniture scattered but still intact and gathering dust. However, every inch of paint and paper on nearly every surface was peeling up in curling strips and draping down in winding spirals, creating a surreally beribboned jungle of decay amid the swanky rooms. Lugubrious streamers left behind in the disarray from some eerie supernatural festivity.

As someone fairly familiar with the site of abandoned decay in this city, the scavenging and willful destructiveness it inevitably invited, this degree of undisturbed deterioration seemed somehow unnatural. As if the families that had once occupied it still went on in the course of their day to day business here, as forgotten and decayed as their surroundings to the rest of the world.

The air was an odd mix of breeze and stagnation, depending on how intact the windows in each room were. Every room we passed held a similarly eerie and lifeless sight but passed by with one being much the same as another, until a movement caught my eye. After a few tense seconds during which we both stood stock still, a flurry of wings rose up from the floor.

I nearly jumped out of my skin and grabbed hold of Adam just as the bird fled through an open window. He grinned appreciatively at my reaction, like he’d been looking forward to spooking me into his arms all night. Feeling like an idiot I blushingly dropped my forehead onto his shoulder and he wrapped his arms around me.

His mouth lowered to my ear again to finish his tale in that same ominously low voice. “So Rose proudly served her biscuits to the residents that lovely morning, and soon after, they began to fall ill”.

I had raised my head from his shoulder to survey the room again and a shiver ran up my spine, goose bumps flashing over my skin.

Adam continued morbidly “One by one at first, then by the apartment full, until the entire building was in chaos. Rose complacently began the usual morning routines of her newly demoted position, surprisingly cheerful… even when the dying began”.

My eyes flashed back to his in shock “She poisoned them all?”

Adam’s lips pulled back in a humorless and resigned smile “She’d laced the biscuits with arsenic. Those that didn’t die were made horribly ill. She stood trial for forty days and was acquitted on the suggestion that the pipes had been to blame” he took my hand and led on again while finishing sardonically “this despite the fact that members of her own fucking family had previously died under mysterious circumstances” he looked back at me and raised a brow, finishing caustically “from arsenic poisoning”.

We began picking our way carefully back to the stairs, and Adam casually continued with the macabre history of the building “There was a fire here shortly thereafter as well. Arson, though no one was caught”.

I shivered while absorbing the dark secrets these walls had housed for nearly a hundred years, the subject helping to keep my mind off the ominous creaking of the stairs under our weight “Why have I never heard any of this before. How do you know the story?”

Adam smirked back at me playfully “Current events section” the reminder had me pausing in stumped silence before he grinned and squeezed my hand to urge me to continue walking.

When we reached the lower floors he guided me out into the main rooms. They were even grander in size and design than those upstairs, but the boarded up windows down here made it disconcertingly dark. Another glimpse of movement from the corner of my eye startled me, but unlike the bird, I found there was nothing there when I turned my head for a better look.

Aware that Adam was watching me, I refused to let my imagination get the better of me and tried to play it cool, but he’d seen me tense up and sauntered towards me, teasing “You seem a little on edge”.

The spooky atmosphere and the proximity of a darkly beautiful Adam in predator mode, cautiously vigilant, hovering protectively over me in the shadowy light, was a heady combination. I played it off with a suggestive smile and his approaching saunter changed to a stalking strut. He towered over me, leaning in so his lips were a breath from mine “Is there something I could do to help you relax”.

He was turning my trick against me, channeling my fear heightened senses in another direction; there was no holding back my sass however “Hmm, it would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge”.

He smiled sinfully and leaned in, forehead pressed to mine, his nose gliding over my cheek, and whispered “Thoughts black, hands apt.” before his lips claimed mine, and I gasped as he unexpectedly hiked me up on the sideboard behind us, rattling the dishes still inside.

I hadn’t made time to get to a laundry mat this week, and was suddenly glad I hadn’t. A miniskirt wasn’t my usual clothing choice, and certainly wasn’t ideal exploration gear, but I wasn’t regretting the choice as he ran his leather clad fingers up my thigh.

His hands pushed the clingy material up until he could reach my hips and then pulled me forward so I was pressed against him. One hand came back up to cup my head, his thumb running over my lip while his eyes roamed my face. I bit down on the leather, prompting him to retaliate by pressing his other thumb to my sex, the soft grain of the glove dragging over my sensitive flesh in slow lazy circles while his mouth descended on mine again.

He ran a hand up under my shirt, the soft warmth of the leather caressing my skin, the texture of the stitching brushing over the peaks to maddening effect. I tugged at the closure of his jeans and felt him smile against my mouth.

“Your hands are certainly apt” I teased “let’s see how mine compare”.

His hissed intake of breath and the moan that followed suggested I might have the edge, before he took the competition out of my hands, plunging into me so hard the dishes audibly shook with every stroke.

The rattling dishes and our panting cries of pleasure filled the room, echoing through the lower levels of the decrepit building. If there was anyone else inside, they were getting one hell of a free show. Adam pulled my hair to the side, exposing my neck to him, and sharply grazed his teeth over the skin till he reached my jaw. He ran haphazard kisses over it before savagely seeking my mouth again.

He threw his head back restlessly and quickened the pace, his thumb seeking me out again and roughly bringing on my orgasm with an urgency that had me holding my breath.  He lowered his head again to meet my eyes, watching me intensely as I succumbed. I half expected to find his eyes had darkened, the way they did when he needed to feed.

His pace became frenzied as his own release approached, we were rocking the buffet so hard the cabinet doors below me gave up the struggle and fell open, allowing the china inside to spill out onto the floor, the sound of smashing glass accentuating Adam’s guttural cries of release, the remaining pieces tumbling out in batches, shattering in time to his last plunges.

Our panting breaths subsided and the quiet of neglect filled the room again. While we put our clothing back in order Adam looked around at the mess, as if mildly surprised at the destruction he’d wrought. I smirked with mock accusation at him and he smiled sheepishly, wrapping his arms around me again, peppering me with gentle kisses this time.

Gradually the sound of footsteps over our heads intruded into our revere. Adam drew back and we tipped our heads up in unison. There was definitely a slow cadence of footfalls echoing in the room, but no dust dislodged from the ceiling to indicate someone passing overhead.

Adam met my worried eyes and reassured “Just something settling” but his glance back up at the ceiling was distinctly unsettling and he tensed as if preparing for a physical blow.

A massive crash followed, deafening in the formerly stagnant silence, and I caught a brief glimpse of dust and debris billowing into the room from the doorway as Adam quickly gathered me to him and shielded me in his arms. When everything went quite again he slowly released me and we looked around apprehensively at the settling dust. Adam cautiously prowled out of the room and I hopped down from the sideboard as quietly as I could.

Just when the oppressive darkness began to bring Ava to mind I heard Adam mutter a softly impressed “Fuckin’ hell”.

Since there didn’t appear to be any further danger, I made my way over to him and stopped in my tracks when I saw what he’d trained the flashlight beam on. It looked as if a radiator had fallen through an upper floor and smashed clean through the stairs “well thank goodness for that”.

Adam turned surprised eyes on me with a cocked brow and I sighed in relief “for a minute there I was about to believe in ghosts”.  

He shook his head at me in exasperation, but I could see the hint of amusement in his expression before he returned to surveying the destruction. The shattered wood was piled high, sharp splinters and spears flung in every direction “It’s damn lucky we weren’t still on them or we’d be the ghosts”.

Life after death was a subject that had been on my mind lately, and I impulsively asked “Do you think there is one?”

Adam had started to pick his way past me and around the damage, keeping a close eye on the ceiling for anything that might still be unstable, but stilled and looked back at my suddenly contemplative tone. “What?”

I bit my lip “An afterlife”. Two cultures had taught me there was one, and that I had loved ones who were happy there.

He had resumed picking his way along but his shoulders sagged almost imperceptibly and he reluctantly looked back at me over his shoulder again, his expression suddenly closed off and enigmatic in the shadows thrown over it by his hair. One solemn blue eye peeking out at me, he suddenly sounded tired “I wouldn’t know Lilith; I’ve gone through rather a lot of trouble to avoid finding out”.

Instantly repentant, I lowered my eyes and faltered in place, trying to think of someway to take back the innocently intended question. He resumed his careful progress, but softened his words by gently reaching back and taking my hand to lead me through the rubble.

We entered a large kitchen, copiously pealing with sadness and neglect, the boarded windows giving it a cavernous effect. It had once been the prided domain of a murderer, but the ghostly qualities of the place seemed faded now, surely we would have woke the dead if they’d been here. A melancholy feeling pervaded it all now. “I wonder what it looked like when the sun could reach it”.

Adam glanced back at me over his shoulder again. Even if he had seen it when it had been new, he still never would have been able to see it in sunlight. His sudden stillness told me I’d hit a nerve and I leaned forward to rest my chin on his shoulder consolingly “What do you miss most about it?”

He glanced back at the windows of the light courts, now filthy with dirt kicked up by the rain the broken skylight allowed in and answered me softly “dust motes”.

The unexpected answer made the corner of my mouth tug up in appreciation and he continued “We watch a sunlight dust dance, and we try to be that lively, but nobody knows what music those particles hear”.

He ducked his head, afraid I wouldn’t understand his odd answer, but I understood Rumi’s sentiment perfectly “Each of us has a secret companion musician to dance to. Unique rhythmic play, a motion in the street we alone know and hear”.

He smiled and turned to lean his forehead against mine speaking even more softly, as if afraid of being overheard “you are my tenth muse”.

I assumed he was telling me there had been nine other women he’d shared our arrangement with, but he elaborated on the mythology “Be thou the tenth muse, ten times more in worth, Than those old nine which rhymers invocate; And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth, Eternal numbers to outlive long date”.

He didn’t expect a response, which was convenient because I didn’t feel capable of giving one. He placed a tender kiss on my forehead, pensively adding “You’re so much more to me than that now”.

His tender admission unleashed my repressed frustration over something I desperately wanted and was told at every turn that I could not have. It ripped through me, nearly tearing down the barriers I set myself. Still unable to even consider the supernatural obstacles, I desperately held on to the last vestiges of the most relatively mundane one. I froze under his loving kiss and reminded him in a pained whisper “I somehow doubt Eve will be thrilled to hear that it’s come to that”. 

He didn’t try to deny or refute it; in fact he said nothing, just leaned his cheek against my forehead and wrapped his arms around me, a confession delivered in innuendo and silence.

Knowing I meant more to him then I’d let myself believe made my heart dance, but it also brought those dreaded obstacles into sharp relief. Surprisingly, it wasn’t just vampirism, but another part of his life that came to mind; and suddenly everything seemed so much more complicated than just whether or not to allow myself to give in.

“You came to Detroit when Marie died, didn’t you?” Adam was used to my odd conversational jumps, his mind sharp enough to follow my intuitive thought process.

Proving he knew exactly where my thoughts had gone, his response was a reluctant and pained “yes”.

He’d spiraled into anger, distance, and isolation after violently losing a muse, for being the indirect reason for the death of someone he hadn’t necessarily loved, but had cared for, appreciated and admired.

Eve’s words came back to me and the real intention behind them was suddenly clear. She’d had a plan all along for encouraging my fleeting presence in Adam’s self-induced exile, for reminding me it was all about the music, warning me not to get attached. She wanted me to bring him back to life, infuse him with it and be on my way without inflicting further damage.

Well, I’d fucked that up royally.

Now I was either a spanner in the works of their relationship or a ticking time bomb of deeper anguish. Adam had let the silence spin out around us while I chased implications through my head in a bid to form some sort of solution, and only found unacceptable ones “What’s it like?”

There was no further explanation needed, vampirism was always the elephant in the room, he tipped my face up to his “sometimes it’s worth it”. I looked up into those eyes, usually as clear as the facets of a blue topaz, now muddled with doubts in the poor light.

I gestured at our surroundings “Worth giving up the sun, hiding from it? Watching everything you care about fade? Living in constant fear of discovery?” I tore my gaze from his so I could really come out with it and sum up my fears “Confined to an existence on the fringes, for love?

Adam suddenly understood all too well why I’d avoided flipping that forty-five “Trapped by a thing called love?”

My eyes snapped back to his guiltily, but there it was, so I continued “A hastily opened window and its death by drapes? You can barely even travel. One little flight delay, someone opens a sash and boom, you spontaneously combust on a flight? Same if your car breaks down? Choosing between starving or taking someone’s life? Risking blood poisoning to survive? Hiding from the world to keep your secret safe!”

 I took a deep breath to rein in my sudden tangent and reiterated “Trapped”.

Adam’s eyes held mine gravely, and I felt like a petulant child unsuccessfully trying to justify my outburst, and I spit out a resentful challenge “Something else you would call it?”

His answer was gently spoken “Living”.

I was surprised to receive such a sincere answer, expecting my sniping prompt on an already sore subject to trigger a scornful offhand curse or make him clam up all together, the way I’d seen him do with Eve.

I tempered myself and responded, hoping to sound more reasonable “That isn’t living Adam. That’s existing”.

He cupped my head in his hands, gently forcing me to meet his eyes “You have to exist in order to live, Lilith. Living comes in spurts, existing is constant. That doesn’t make it any less meaningful. You can’t have one without the other”.

There was a fire in his eyes as he stared into mine, desperately entreating me to see it his way. It occurred to me that if I stared into those eyes much longer I might. If I stared into those eyes and contemplated the emotions I saw there for too long… I’d believe anything he wanted.

Unwilling to continue the argument I quipped. “Did we really just get into a debate on whether or not it’s better to burn out or fade away?” His intense expression relented into a smirk and he pulled me against him in a tight embrace.

The adventure was over for the night, and we were both ready to go home. He led me to a series of ladders and trap doors in a rear maintenance hatch. With blind faith, I followed him up in the dark enclosed space, my ears tuned in to the sound of him as my hands navigated the darkness, hoping the rungs were hardier then the dry rotted stairs had been.

His knowledge of the layout made me wonder when he’d last been here, had the building been abandoned when he’d explored it? Or had he sat as a guest in the rooms below when they’d been occupied by the upper crust of Detroit? I could just imagine the young ladies of the building simpering over him, resplendent in Victorian tails or in a dapper drape cut suit.

Back on the roof, he lifted the heavy mood lingering from our debate by kissing me soundly and asking “What did you think?”

I was all too ready to let go of weighty thoughts for the evening and revel in his affection, quipping “I just fucked a vampire in a haunted house; Halloween will be so boring now”.

He rolled his eyes dramatically at my crass response, but gave in to an exasperated and slightly arrogant grin as we headed back to the fire escape.

Despite the company of the dead, this wasn’t a neighborhood to let down your guard against the living. There was a bar called the Temple literally around the corner from us, facing the Hotel Fort Wayne across Cass Avenue, its back entrance just an empty lot away from where we stood. Our neighbor on the opposite side of the block, across Park Street, was the garishly red Temple Hotel. Adam had told me it had gained notoriety with artists and musicians after Houdini had stayed there in the thirties, I knew it as a rundown flop house with a notorious reputation for drugs and prostitution. A few weeks ago, two people walking to their car just up the street had been shot to death.

We’d checked the area carefully from the roof before heading down and Adam insisted I remain on the lowest level of the fire escape while he brought the car around for me. I stood watch over him until he disappeared around the corner and then began my descent when I heard the engine start, reluctant to keep him waiting and possibly attract attention. He was pulling up to the sidewalk when I caught a sudden movement in my peripheral vision.

A man emerged from the shadows of the grassy lot behind the building, the exaggerated sound of a zipper accompanying him. Evidently we hadn’t seen him from the roof because he’d inconspicuously hidden himself in the overgrowth whilst pissing in the garden. Experience dictated the best course of action was to ignore him and continue walking, but I had to pull up short when he suddenly stepped in front of me, cutting off my progress to the curb “where are you going in that pretty car?”

I kept my head down and attempted to walk around him, through the permeating smell of alcohol and cigarettes.

He blocked my path a second time. “you know, most pretty girls I see getting into fancy cars around here are whores. Are you a whore?”

I flashed him a warning look and he leered challengingly in return. I wasn’t impressed. The guy was burly and a good deal larger than I, but he was also buzzed. At the least, the scales were even as far as I was concerned or possibly tipped slightly in my favor.

The real problem here was Adam.  If he came to my rescue we were really going to have trouble. I looked over at the car to see if he had noticed the situation yet.

He had.

He was leaned forward, watching the guys back, wary tension in every line of his silhouette one hand gripping the steering wheel while the other reached for his door handle. I subtly waved my hand palm down to signal him I had it under control.

In the interest of ending this quickly I gave up the casual pretense and darted around the jerk, quickly moving toward the car.

For a moment I thought I was in the clear, and then the fucker gave my hair a good yank, snapping my head back.  “What you don’t speak?” He said something else as I was stumbling backwards, but the furious roaring of blood in my ears was too loud to catch more than the word ‘whore’ again.

Adrenaline flooded my system instantly from the rough contact, my heart kicking into high gear as the instinct to fight took over. Instead of reaching for my hair to relieve the pressure, I quickly raised the elbow closest to him and wrapped the opposite hand around my fist; locking my wrist and shoving my elbow back with the strength of both arms, driving it into his face.

He staggered back, dazed, and I spared a glance to check on Adam. He was opening the car door and climbing out.

I held up my hand in protest and he froze, furious but reluctant to be a distraction at a moment when I couldn’t afford one. Meathead called my attention back to him roaring “bitch”, tipping me off to the coming blow and I instinctively ducked.

In his drunken anger he overshot his swing, allowing me to crouch under it and step past him as his momentum twisted his torso around and threw him off balance. Once I was behind him, out of range of his arms, I straightened up and reverse kicked with ruthless efficiency, catching him dead on the back of the knee currently supporting his off kilter weight.

He went down hard.

He was sprawled face down and motionless on the pavement when I turned back to him. My gut clenched at the sudden unnatural stillness. Had I knocked him out, or killed him?

I took a few cautious steps towards him before he lifted his head and his muffled voice spluttered indignantly “you broke my fucking noise!” He kept repeating it in miserable astonishment as he clumsily cradled the injury.

The crimson smearing of blood was startlingly vivid over his hands and face, pouring from his nose so copiously that it was already pooling on the pavement. My eyes immediately shot up to locate Adam.

He wasn’t with the car.

He was stepping onto the sidewalk behind us, elegant arrogance proclaimed with every imposingly powerful long stride, his shoulders set with disdain, the muscles of his arms and hands clenching in barely contained fury, and a predatory promise of retribution in his dark eyes.

I rushed to step in between him and his would-be victim, insisting “Look, we gotta go, it’s taken care of, just get back in the car”.

Adam’s pace didn’t slow and his unnaturally piercing gaze was still latched on my attacker. I tempered the ineffective demand while I backed up in the face of his relentless approach “Look, I know you’re pissed and you want to come to my defense, and I appreciate that, but we don’t need this kind of attention”.

He slowed but his eyes where still fixed on his target and his anger hadn’t cooled any. I stood my ground and placed a hand on his chest, finally bringing him to a reluctant halt. He was still coiled to pounce, the muscles tense beneath my fingers. This wouldn’t be some manly display to defend my honor and teach a cad a lesson, one glance at that blood and Adam’s angry reprisal would be unrestrainedly lethal.

I leaned in close and dropped my voice to an imploring whisper, my lips nearly touching his neck to ensure I wasn’t overheard “He’s bleeding Adam.” He finally tore his eyes away to look down at me, and I desperately willed him to keep them on mine, knowing it was my last chance to stall before the drunken fool turned to confront us and Adam saw the blood himself “He isn’t going to tell anyone he got beat up by a girl. We can walk away now or you can be responsible for a body tonight”.

Adam stared back at me, his anger impressively intimidating even if I wasn’t its target. I watched him resentfully trying to rein it in and clear his head. Scrabbling on the pavement behind me announced my brief opportunity to intervene was indeed over.

Just as my heart started to sink, Adam put an arm around me and turned, protectively escorting me back to the car with a brisk stomping pace. He brought me around to the driver’s door with him, unwilling to leave me alone on the passenger’s side, and unable to trust himself alone around the bleeding idiot once I was inside.

I clumsily held onto his hand as I slid over to the passenger side while he stood for a moment and inhaled deep breaths of the night air, or the scent of blood, I wasn’t sure which.

Once he was in the car and we were pulling away from the curb, I watched the disregarded threat back on the sidewalk sit up and look dazedly around as he faded from view in the side mirror, swiping shamefacedly at his bleeding nose and blissfully unaware that he’d nearly had his throat torn out right where he sat.

I finally took a deep breath myself while my head swirled with the implications of the attack. More instinctual difficulties were brought to light by the encounter; Adam’s as well my own. It wasn’t the first time I’d experienced the momentary horror that I might have inadvertently taken someone’s life while defending myself.

That jarring fear still in my heart, and the waves of tension issuing from Adam in a forcible reminder of his own animalistic side, pushed my mind down dark paths I had no desire to explore. A little whisper reminding me that people likely _had_ died for his hunger for hundreds of years, before blood banks had eased his condition. How many more deaths could there be if his supply ran out?

The more I came to know him… the more I lived with the side effects of his condition, the more I came to loath immortality. I was unsure if this was a side effect of caring about him, or a fear that I might become one, and be capable of a level of lethality that would put even Ava to shame. The idea of taking someone’s life made my blood run cold, could I exist in a form where I wanted it?

I hadn’t allowed myself to think about this, content in the knowledge that Adam didn’t turn anyone, but my thoughts were spinning out of control now… like a whirling dervish.

Trying to drown out all the bigger issues by focusing on the silly thought, Rumi’s turning poem came to mind, which only served to inadvertently remind me of all my problems again. ‘You have said what you are. I am what I am. Your actions in my head, My head here in my hands. With something circling inside. I have no name for what circles so perfectly.’

Its name was love. It was circling because I wasn’t allowed to feel it for him. It was my secret, even from myself.

 ‘A secret turning in us, Makes the universe turn. Head unaware of feet, And feet head. Neither cares. They keep turning.’ This brought Eve to mind, she certainly seemed unaware of what was currently unfolding in Adam’s life, and he seemed to have as little connection to hers, yet they still carried on, professing to love each other.

I suppose everyone needed a little time apart every now and then, and Eve was content with her friends, but Adam had been lonely in the extreme and they still hadn’t sought each other out. Was he a third wheel in Tangier?

My own third wheel status had me wondering how Ava and Marlow fit in?

Something clicked in my head and I uttered it aloud into the relative silence of the humming car “Fuck! Ava has a crush on you”.

Adam’s head snapped around, instantly annoyed by the remark and slightly bewildered by my abrupt deduction. He blinked slowly and worked his mouth to utter an irritated denial but nothing came out and he exaggeratedly turned his attention back to the road instead.

I’d hadn’t just struck a nerve, I’d nailed it.

There was so much of their history I didn’t know, so much I had to make intuitive guesses about. My nightly stalking by Ava had reduced my tolerance for mystery where she was concerned “Did you ever encourage it?”

Adam didn’t take his eyes off the road, just enunciated in an emphatically flat tone “No”.

“Why does Eve put up with it?”

Adam sighed “She doesn’t feel threatened by it”.

Well of course she wouldn’t, if she let Adam take inspiration from being with other women, someone Adam rejected the affections of certainly wouldn’t inspire jealousy, especially when that someone was indulged as a little sister.

If I could tell it made Adam uncomfortable, Eve had to know. “She thinks it’s cute? Harmless?”

His gaze shifted uncomfortably but remained on the road.

This cast a whole new light on Ava’s behavior in Paris, and her interest in me. I had thought she was just sending a warning out of concern for her sister, a reminder not to get too close.

But she wasn’t just threatening me, she was stalking Adam.

Ava tolerated Eve because she loved Ava and allowed her a means to get close to Adam, but I was occupying the position she really wanted, I was competition.

Marie had been competition.

Knowing Ava’s random savagery had a particularly selfish motivation behind it made her playfulness even more sinister.

My face must have betrayed my thoughts; Adam reached over and ran the back of a gloved hand over my cheek reassuringly, the corners of his mouth lifting when I leaned into his touch. We pulled up to the house and traversed the overgrown yard quickly, eager to return to the normalcy of our isolated little world in the crumbling mansion.

The house was utterly dark inside and instead of relaxing, my anxiety increased exponentially when I hit the light switch and nothing happened. I drew in a shuddering breath, my panicked brain ridiculously hoping that I’d fallen asleep in the car… that when Ava’s face jumped out at me in the next few seconds it would just be a dream I would wake up from. Something touched my hand and I flinched.

“Lilith, it’s all right.” Adam’s voice was sternly concerned and he reached for my hand again, lacing his fingers with mine in a deliberate and reassuring manner. “The power’s just off”.

I heard the heavy footfalls of his boots and his hand pulled me into step behind him, much like we’d done on the roof. He navigated the dark house and I followed cautiously in his footsteps until he located the flashlights. He took my hand again, knowing I still needed his touch for reassurance if not guidance, and we headed out back.

Adam lifted the panel in the ground and tinkered while I leaned against the wall and tried to shed the tension of the outing’s crappy ending. Beside me, a patch of bright red caught my eye. “Shit. They came back?”

The dynamo roared into motion, busily humming as it picked up speed, and Adam’s voice echoed from the cavity “What?” he regained his feet and closed the hatch “What came back?”  

“The fly agaric, they’re poisonous. Every time I think I’ve wiped them out, they come back”. Adam smiled indulgently as he approached, reminding me that he probably knew more about them then I did. I kept worrying the abandoned domestic animals that roamed the neighborhoods might be desperate enough to eat them, since they were competing with the coyotes and wildlife for food.

“Well, mycelium spores are notoriously hardy”. I scoffed “you know my mother told me she once attended a lecture over the genetic similarity between fungus and animals… how their actually more closely related to each other than they are to plants, and one of the lecturers actually theorized that mushrooms have the ability to survive in space… and initially came from another planet?”

Our slightly derisive smiles faded as we seemed to have the same thought occur to us at the same moment, turning in unison to the atmospheric energy aerials a few steps away. Neither one of us spoke our thoughts aloud as our eyes traveled back to one another, but we were both clearly thinking about the prospect.

“Just when I thought the evening couldn’t get any more unsettling, weirdness abounds”. I shook off the outlandish thoughts of invading life forms, following a pensive Adam inside, but we left the caps undisturbed.

Too keyed up to relax, we ended up working off the tension by recording a couple more songs. These were completely different in tone then what we’d done earlier. A short moody riff perfect for walking the haunted and dangerous streets of Detroit with a vampire kicked things off.

A driving beat and angry contemplation over the guy pissing in the garden followed. I found the drums particularly satisfying for blowing off the tension the events of the evening had caused.

We dropped into bed at dawn. Adam pulled me close and sleepily mumbled in my ear “Shall I tire you out a bit more? Maybe we’ll exorcise her from your dreams. Release all that tension from all those troubling doubts and feelings whirling around inside you tonight”. 

My drowsy eyes were suddenly wide open and shot up to meet his. “I went to a lot of trouble this evening to avoid bringing that up”.

His eyes were at half-mast and his voice languidly seductive “Lilith, it’s all you’ve talked about tonight. I was in the studio too, remember? You were prolific”.

I hadn’t enunciated it in words, but it had come out in the music, and music was a language Adam understood completely.

I stroked his cheek, wanting so badly to be able to love him without all the complications. He cupped my head and pulled me in close, till his lips were on mine. A tender kiss that quieted my thoughts and yet made me yearn even more for what I couldn’t have.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam’s reclusive vampiric existence is disturbed by a woman who needs his help, she turns out to be more than he expected. A ‘zombie’ he can’t apply the designation to… an equal he can’t resist.  
> Chapter 9: Time runs out

I woke later to uneasy sounds as Adam began moving restlessly in his sleep, pushing at the bedding with his hands, clenching them into fists. Not thinking twice about it, I leaned in to shake him, and went rigid when I realized my mistake, unfortunately just as his hand clamped around my throat.

For one terror filled moment I held my breath and waited, telling myself to stay calm, to keep him calm. When his grip didn’t brutally tighten, I reached for his hand and found I was able to pull the long elegantly gifted fingers away easily.

I was working up the courage to make another attempt at waking him, when he jolted upright into a sitting position. Wary at this new development, I watched him take deep panting breaths, his hands splaying and clenching in the bedding at his sides, hair wild, eyes flicking around the room for a specific form of reassurance before landing on me and apparently finding it.

Visibly relaxing, he almost groaned with relief as he leaned over and laid his head on my stomach, his arms gathering me to him, instinct prompting me to curl around his distressed form protectively.

I smoothed his hair till his breathing calmed and he raised his head to look at me. There was no need to explain what he’d dreamt about, or rather who, I could see it in his tortured eyes before he leaned back on his pillow and let out a long breath. He kept an arm around me, stroking my shoulder while we stared up at the canopy.

He’d either been fending off her advances or trying to protect me. Either way he’d borne the assault today, and yet it was still me that needed the reassuring, perhaps more now than when I bore the brunt of her ‘visits’. “Why you?”

His answer was quietly succinct, anger and resentment just below the surface, antipathy barely held in check “It was a message”.

I waited for him to elaborate, but he turned an almost fevered look on me instead. Hesitating just long enough for me to sense his oncoming plea like a punch in the stomach.  “Lilith… let me…”

I sucked in a breath, dread making my gut response take over, cutting him off with an adamantly blurted “No”.

Undeterred, he pulled me close again and whispered unsteadily in my ear, like he was divulging a secret he was supposed to be keeping from the world, even from himself “I can’t lose you”.

I wanted to melt into those words, into his embrace, and be lost to him. Drowned in the deep dark warm abyss, no longer floating, allowing myself to sink into it irretrievably. Some small sense of self-preservation kicked in and pulled me back. I refused to allow myself to contemplate that whispered confession too deeply and tried to keep my tone gently aloof “You will lose me one day Adam, it’s inevitable, and you’ll find yourself another muse”.

His hand on my cheek was firm as he turned my face to meet his gaze. He looked on the verge of breaking, his eyes begging me to understand “That isn’t why I need you”.

My heart floated for a few brief seconds before the string was yanked back to earth with jarring rationality and I sat up. “Need? Or Want? Because you really don’t need me Adam. You’ve just…you’ve been lonely too long”.

He sat up slowly and absorbed my words, then swallowed hard and looked down at my hand, utterly still for a moment before he gently clasped and contemplated it, his voice lowering by rote to his calm reverent tone of recitation “This living hand, now warm and capable. Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold, and in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights”.

It was Keats, and though I returned the pressure of his clasping hand almost reflexively, I used the remainder of the poem’s verses as my rebuttal “That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood, So in my veins red life might stream again?”

The pain in his eyes tempered my stringency, his distaste for turning another clearly warring with what he was asking of me, and I tried for a gently reasonable tone to diffuse the situation while I held up and indicated our joined hands with a reassuring smile “And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is– I hold it towards you”.

Instantly annoyed at the patronizing tone of my response, his eyes twitched away and he turned his head to glance back over his shoulder and inhale a frustrated breath, but I pressed on “I’m here Adam. Here and now and we are together. Let’s not spoil it”.

After another deep breath he seemed to relent, kissing my hand and settling onto his pillow, pulling me back against him, but there was a gleam in his eye and a mulish set to his chin that said this argument was far from over.

I was snuggled up beneath his arm, my head on his softly rising chest, determined to return to some semblance of normality and find the sleep that was eluding me. Adam’s fingers drummed unconsciously against my shoulder in an uneasy rhythm, making it obvious he wasn’t falling back asleep.

The more I tried to relax the tighter the frustrated tension seemed to coil within me. After a few minutes he broke the silence, but barely, his voice soft and full of regret tinged hope “Grow old with me then”.

It was my turn to sign in exasperation as the coil sprung and I rose up on my elbow to look at his frowning brow, his eyes clouded with pensive hope “Spend the next sixty years lingering in this house with a man that doesn’t age? And I will Adam, just like this city I will peak and then fade until I crumble to dust”. I laughed cynically “While you’ll still look like a dark seraph of sex. I can just _imagine_ it”.

Ignoring my scorn for this imagined scenario, he carried on, tenderly stubborn as he wheedled “Then let me turn you”.

The bluntly asked question softly reverberated off the walls and assailed me with its possibilities, brought the idea from the murk of abstract thought to the center stage of tangibility. My defensive response was out of my mouth before I thought twice “That wouldn’t be living for me, that would be existing by feeding off the lives of others, unable to give anything in return. Like a parasite”.

Adam’s embrace became instantly rigid, his voice hardening “Is that how you ‘ _imagine’_ it?”

I froze, biting my lip at the offense I’d unintentionally given. Even verbally, I always overplayed my defense. He pulled away and we both sat up fully, frustration making him turn his back on me. His voice rose irately “So either way you’re afraid of your own _fucking imagination_!”

The silence of a precipice’s edge enveloped the room as we sat turned away from each other.

After dismissing the fleeting hope that the discord would fade away if I let the quiet continue long enough, I gathered myself up to lay the cards out on the table, knowing I was about to wreak havoc on whatever it was we had, to say things I could never take back, but that I had to say it all the same.

He was right, I was scared. I could not imagine an option that allowed us to stay together that didn’t involve a compromise that would end up breaking me. Just as it was breaking him when I’d first seen him. “If I stay… what then Adam? You’re going to watch me get old? Mourn me when I’m gone?”

His response was barely above a whisper, but his angry resentment was clear “I’ll morn you’re going either way, do you think doing it sooner will somehow spare me? Losing out on decades of knowing you is supposed to be easier for me? When there is a fucking alternative?”

“Alternatives? You’re asking me to give up everything Adam. To remove my grain of sand from the hourglass, to stand by and watch everything I care about pass away… ‘til they’re all spent at the bottom, and I remain. Barred from making a contribution, an eternal outsider, sitting above it all, until what? I reach a point where I’m completely fucking detached? I become like Eve, humanity becomes nothing more than an observable curiosity or reluctant sustenance?”

Adam’s fear filled eyes shot back to mine for a moment before he turned away again, confirming his own struggle was still ongoing, he didn’t have Eve’s detachment yet. Might not ever be able to develop it. His animosity toward ‘the zombies’ was driven by his inability to truly detach himself from humanity, or take part in it.

“The alternatives your offering me are that I give up being in the light forever... just so that I can play immortal mistress to an eternally married man? Would you really ask that of me? You, who knows all too well what it is to play second fiddle for someone you love?”

I watched his shoulders stiffen as my point hit home with deadly accuracy and he turned back to me, his eyes full of a pain that I could already feel as if it came from my own heart, and I whispered “I can’t make that trade”.

I ran my thumb reverently over his cheek and gentled the admission “I might have chosen that path once Adam” I cast my eyes down and left unspoken ‘If I hadn’t known you, if I hadn’t loved you’.

Instead I added “But I’ve seen where it leads”. I sought his eyes again, willing him to understand “and I choose _not_ to follow it”.

His hand covered mine and he turned his face into my palm, brushing a tender kiss there with resigned sadness before wordlessly pulling me down to lie next to him.

We both pretended to sleep, but I knew he was still staring anxiously at the canopy, his body rigid with unease, eyes restlessly flicking to the security monitor on the dresser. After an hour of us both pretending to sleep I slunk out of his arms and got dressed, but he kept up the pretense, his charade allowing me an unprotested exit to pursue my usual insomnia induced pastimes.

I spent the day in a melancholy funk, talking myself in and out of things as I distractedly browsed shops and drove around aimlessly after purchasing nothing but a Paganini violin that I couldn't pass up. When I’d managed to think myself into contrary circles of logic versus desire, and I could feel myself caving. I flipped on the radio as a distraction.

The unmistakable refrain of Little Willie John’s ‘I’m Shakin’ unexpectedly filled the car, but it wasn’t Willie. The horns had been replaced with electric and bass guitars in a riff very familiar to me. Jack’s voice followed a moment later. I pulled over and sat in stunned silence as he sang to me, adding his own lyrics to the remake “I got fever, yeah. Fever, yeah, I burn forsooth” and “I'm Bo Diddley” a reflection of our time in the studio.

The song ended, but my mind continued to play it. While I’d been boarded up in hiding, the world was going on without me. A world full of artists collaborating and pushing their craft, putting their own interpretations out there and absorbing the influence of others, being inspired by it. How could Adam stand being cut off from that?

I remembered again his apathetic disdain when I’d first come into the house, his excitement at finding he had someone in his presence he could collaborate with. How long could I be his crutch if we were both cut off in that house?

Could I really do it? Could I really sustain an actual eternity on the fringes if it meant being with someone I loved? Could I risk facing that existence and what I might become if I were alone? He and Eve had vowed till death do us part three times and now they lived in different cities four thousand miles apart.

My doubts quieted and I put the car back into gear.

I arrived home well before dusk and hung the violin on a rack in the livingroom with a collection of other instruments, then fell asleep on the couch until dark. I overslept and woke to an empty house, Adam was out making a pick-up. I wandered aimlessly through rooms that were little more than intriguing collections without their owner’s presence.  A vacuum tube had gone out in the ancient tv, so I decided to bide my time recording something on my own.

My father and Eve had been on my mind so much I wasn’t really surprised when the Sintir was the instrument I picked up. I’d recorded something short and fast paced, reflecting the nomadic vein my thoughts were now in, and was so wrapped up in listening to the playback that I didn’t realize there were other people in the house until I heard Adam’s voice on the stairs.

He sounded odd, like he was trying to have a conversation down a tunnel, and I suddenly realized he was trying to warn me that he wasn’t alone. Ian must have brought him the tube to repair the tv! There was no time to turn off the music, I managed to dive over the sofa and hide under a discarded carpet.

From under the sofa I watched Adam’s black boots cautiously enter the room, the halting tension in his steps easing when he realized I wasn’t there, then he headed for the reel-to-reel. Ian’s feet padded in behind him like a loyal puppy “Hey man, I didn’t know you liked that sort of thing”.

The music cut off abruptly as Adam reached the recording and shut it off. Ian kept talking “Man, if you’re interested in that I know a girl that is so cool. Kept hoping I might get you to come check out her stuff, see what you thought of her music…” Ian laughed in his endearingly laid back way of expressing incredulousness “Lilith’s amazing…”

Adam began a hedging response and I could almost picture the dodgy look he wore when he was anxiously trying not to slip up. Familiar with Adam’s reluctance to leave the house, Ian nervously chattered on “Seriously man, it’s not a problem, she’s gotten harder to find. I’m not even sure where she is anymore. She was gonna skip town for London, or some shit like that, but her car turned up burnt out a few weeks ago. Her ex is making a big fuss about it now. Not sure why” Ian laughed ironically “she used to call him Dr. Dickwad ‘cause he turned out to be married, but he’s got the police looking all over for her” Ian suddenly realized he was babbling and clammed up.

Adam had frozen where he stood and it was a second before he remembered to act natural and respond. When he did she heard an exchange of cash and Adam’s voice was quiet with uncertain hesitation “Uh… thank you Ian”.

Anxious to step back into Adam’s comfort zone, Ian amiably responded “Hey, no problem man”.

When Ian’s footsteps had faded and the front door closed I stood up from behind the sofa and dusted myself off, watching Adam’s back as he watched Ian head for his car on the security monitor.

He didn’t turn, but softly acknowledged I was in the room “Dr. Dickwad?”

Embarrassed at how immature it sounded and yet still peeved enough to be slightly amused at the crude nickname, I lowered my eyes to the floor and fought off a smirk.

“Thought you didn’t get involved with married men?”

“I don’t, or I didn’t, intentionally… before” I waved my hand between us, at a loss “this”.

Adam turned around, his hair mussed from the hastily removed cap, his poorly tied dressing gown revealing the sleek muscles of his chest, dark jeans peeking out below the hem, his bare feet padding over the carpet as he slowly approached. He must have changed out of the scrubs in a hurry before he’d let Ian in. He tipped his head, waiting to hear more.

“He’s a doctor at the hospital, consults on difficult cases. Very respectable, very talented, my grandfather thinks he hung the fucking moon”.

Adam stopped in front of me, intrigued and intently outwaiting my reluctance to open up and move beyond the tight lipped answers I was giving, and I sighed “My grandfather set us up. I was trying to make nice for my mother’s sake so I accepted. He was very charming, very intelligent, very desirable… perfect. I told myself, this isn’t so bad, and I’m making everyone happy”.

“A few months in, I found out he had a wife on the other side of the country. Married her before he went to med school, traveled back and forth on weekends, told me it was because he was still running a practice there until he could sell it”.

Adam’s head hung in an ever so slightly guilty way and I put a finger under his chin to raise his enthralling blue eyes to mine “The day I found out, I was supposed to have dinner with my family at my grandfathers. I went with the intention of exposing him, I arrived to discover I was at my own engagement party, that I was expected to take a position in his practice, and that my grandfather was pulling strings so he could enroll me in medical school.”

“They all looked so happy, so proud of me… I actually thought about saying yes” Adam’s brow furrowed in distaste over the potential waste of my true talents.

“When I hesitated, my mother and grandfather pulled me aside and told me they knew he’d made a little mistake. This woman was a poor choice for someone with his potential, and they had approached her earlier that week and explained the issue. They’d offered to buy her off for a quick divorce but she refused”.

I closed my eyes for a deep breath to get through the rest “When I started to balk, they mistook my reasons, smiled and assured me she was no longer an issue. She’d ‘removed herself from the picture’ that afternoon”.

“They knew. They knew what he was and just saw opportunity, she meant nothing, I meant nothing. She was just an obstacle and I was just a pawn for fulfilling their lives”.

It was Adam’s turn to tip my chin up and bring my eyes back to his “You’re nobody’s pawn Lillith” a smirk played at the corners of his mouth “What did you do?”

The corner of my mouth tugged back in response “I tapped my champagne glass, got everyone’s attention, and set the record straight on all counts. Threw the drink in his face, and never looked back”.

A proud grin flitted across his face before he pulled me to him, tall hard muscle and soft skin that I wanted to melt into. I breathed him in and enjoyed the embrace for a moment, before Adam interrupted “It’s been nearly a year. Why is he so fucking keen to find you now?”

“He’s been trying to find ways to discredit what I said that night ever seen, maybe he’s just stirring things up so he can save face by making me look disreputable”. My eyes flew wide “Adam, if the police are looking for me, asking questions, they’ll eventually get to the last people who saw me. Randy and those idiots could lead them here, right to your fucking door”.

If I left the police might attempt to bring Adam in for questioning or something, in daylight. If I stayed my bizarre disappearance would continue to be questioned, Randy would start giving more thought to the house I’d vanished in, to the guy at the door, to that fact that Ian’s buyer had been somewhere in the area, to the potential money here. Even if the police didn’t start harassing Adam, Randy and his goons would. If my whereabouts continued to be debated… there would be no leverage to keep Watson in line with Adam’s supply.

I pulled bulled out of his arms to find my thoughts reflected in the worried set of Adam’s features, a panicked rigidity that potential exposure of his secret sometimes brought to him, like a wolf freezing to assess a potential threat. Only this time, I was the source of the threat.

 “I want to speak to Eve”. The words flew out of my mouth, almost of their own volition. Adam’s brows crinkled, for once too distracted to follow my sudden redirection. “Now. Alone. Please.”

His eyes searched mine, wary of what I was up to, before he mutely turned and shifted the tv, removing the back to repair it. I went up to the bathroom to make myself presentable, wondering why I felt the need to do so, but doing it none the less. When I emerged Adam had everything set up and was outside messing with the car, constant glances over his shoulder telling me he was on high alert.

I took a deep breath and sat down on the sofa, the soft white noise from the speakers giving way to electronic beeps as I hit the button sequence on his eighties era cordless phone that would autodial her iPhone. After a few obnoxious electronic rings blared through the room her melodic voice echoed through the speakers “Adam?” The rolling snow on the screen resolved into the chalky pale manifestation that was Eve.

She had eyes that seemed to drink you in, taking in every detail and reveling in it. Her voice was ripe with curiosity and uncertainty “Oh, not Adam”. She reoriented herself, and I was a little relieved to hear concern creep in as she inquired “Is everything alright Lilith?”

“Adam is fine, he’s out working on the car… if that’s what you mean?”

She watched me for a moment with those probing eyes and settled in for whatever was about to unfold, her eyebrows lifting in open anticipation as she waited for me to begin.

I rubbed my hands together uneasily, shifting my eyes away from her before diving in “I’m… abysmal at doing what I’m told”.

Eve sighed like someone who knows the game is up. “I admit, Lilith, I had hoped that you would draw Adam’s focus out of himself. That you would remind him what living is. Lift some of the guilt and resentment he’s plagued himself with since Paris”.

There was a note of strain there, an unspoken understanding that he was holding it against Eve too. “That you might inspire him to relocate, abandon his mystifying attachment to that city and seek us out here again”.

The last statement made a bitter taste rise in my throat. She smiled gently and clarified “A muse can inspire creativity stemming from loss every bit as much as pleasure can”. My thoughts must have been written on my face because her smile suddenly faded and her manner became more direct “Adam doesn’t turn people; your absence was inevitable one way or another, you were destined to be a mere quintessence of dust to him one day”.

Much as I disliked being spoken of as a means to an end, she was practically echoing my own earlier sentiments, and there was an immortal’s logic to her viewpoint. Eve was in it for the long haul; I was stimulus for a period of creative productivity, an impetus to reignite him and reconnect them. This illustrated to me the crucial way in which Eve did not understand Adam.

The source of his brooding anxiety, which she appreciated but didn’t really get, was that he was deeply empathic. He was an emotional sponge, you couldn’t just tell him to get over something, or affect him from a distance, reason him out of something with words, he had to feel it, needed to stand in the aura of it and let it seep into his bones.

Or maybe she did understand it, hence her tolerance for his Muses. “So what? I was supposed to be some sort of proxy?” I could not grasp the nuances of spending an actual eternity with someone, how she could happily while away her time in Tangier with Marlow, treating Adam with an out of sight out of mind mentality.

She turned away for a moment and spoke with fatalistic acceptance “I underestimated the connection you would make”. She brought her eyes back to mine, a slight shrug accompanying the admission. “I suppose I knew it would happen eventually. When you’ve lived so many lifetimes, the love of a lifetime is bound to come along more than once”

There was a distance in her eyes that told me she was thinking of her own affair of the heart, but I also knew it was different with us.

“I’m no Marlow, Eve”. Her attention snapped back to me, eyes bright with fascinated challenge at my insight “I want him the same way you do.” I nearly added ‘the way every woman that comes into his life wants him’ but I left the thought unsaid and lowered my head as I ran my hands through my hair in frustration and muttered under my breath the question that had been haunting me for months “What has this man got?”

There was a weighty, almost disapproving silence before Eve responded “No one understands his appeal better than I do, and I try to be very forgiving of the situations that result”. She hedgingly added “Even if he isn’t…” 

My head shot up and my eyes intently met hers again. She knew. She knew about Ava. Her tone implying she viewed it as a harmless crush. Somehow I didn’t think she’d appreciate hearing my thoughts on her manipulative ‘little sister’ and I let that sleeping dog lie, cutting to the heart of my own issue instead “And if he is?”

Eve gently sighed and looked away “I’m afraid we’ve never quite found ourselves in this situation before. Even with the incident in Paris… I believe he felt great affection for her, but it was more the circumstances of her death that burdened him so heavily. If she’d lived, they would eventually have gone their separate ways, same as the others. Just fond memories on both sides”.

Adam had already made it clear he had no desire to separate. Eve might stay away for the length of my life, but what state would that eventually leave Adam in? Eve would bounce back from loss, she’s a survivor, Adam would let it consume him. I looked away and shook my head as I lowered it into my hands, trying to clear the image of his pleading eyes from my mind “So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights”.

The cryptic words weren’t lost on her, and her worry became evident “Yes, I realized what a conundrum we’re in when he mentioned possibly turning you” there was no spite in her voice, just genuine concern on his behalf.

I lifted my head and flung my hands in impassioned frustration “So what am I supposed to do? Be a mistress… a source of despair, or an eternal third wheel? I don’t want to be turned Eve, I don’t want your curse, but I don’t want to hurt him either”.

Eve’s voice was pained as she gave me her simple reply, spreading her hands helplessly “I have no solution”.

With it all out in the open between us, a long despondent silence followed.

“You know he’s an empath, Eve. He needs to feed off of the right emotions every bit as much as he needs blood”

She watched me a moment more, admiringly, and then shook her head marveling “He’s in such good hands”.

Annoyed and feeling patronized, I quietly responded “You said yourself it would end one way or another… He needs you here. He needs your light to get through it”.

Eve’s intensity returned and her gentle voice slowly began to fill with heated impatience at this “You’re leaving him? Now? Why?”

I closed my eyes, summoning strength to finalize my choice “Because it’s the only solution”.

Her mouth worked for a moment and I continued on “I need to you to be here Eve. If you stay there you’ll forget he needs you and he’ll sit here alone in the dark and feed off thoughts of futility and he’ll slip away again”.

There was grudging offence in her manner now “Lilith, I assure you he will be fine, he has been fine for 500 years, because he has me”.

I snapped back impatiently “But he doesn’t have you Eve. Marlow has you, Tangier has you, Adam isn’t a book that you can set down and come back to whenever you feel the urge”.

She stared at me, offended to the point of incredulousness.

I was so afraid I wasn’t making my point, I’d been blunt beyond anything I’d intended. The words tumbled out in a rush of justification as I realized I’d probably negated my efforts to make any headway with her “You didn’t see what he was like when I got here Eve, I can’t bear the thought of him going back to that. You’ve had something special for a long time; I can’t give this to him for as long as he’s going to need it… you can. Don’t ask him to come back to Tangier. Come here for him, come here and get to know him again, understand why this place matters to him, share it with him, let it reconnect you”.

Her eyes appraised me, the methodical observer coming into play again “If you love him enough to be able to say that to me, why not let him turn you?”

The question brought me visions of Ava with her fangs sadistically bared, of the weary despondent wrath that had been Adam, his beloved only present as a picture on his nightstand. “Why did he feel the need to move alone to Detroit? Why did you feel the need to marry him three times? How do you make a relationship last, literally, for eternity?”

The conversation was rapidly devolving and I got the feeling that she was enjoying the chaos in some intrigued yet distant sense, like she could see my thoughts and was fascinated but not necessarily affected or worried.

“Look, Eve, Adam is stuck in an existence where he can’t contribute unless it’s hidden. Just like Marlow has to hide behind others like Shakespeare. He needs a way to get the work out there, he needs to be able to contribute. He can’t because… he’s trapped. I don’t want to be trapped”.

She wasn’t buying it “So you’d turn down centuries of living?”

“What you do isn’t living Eve. You’re both shadows feasting on the ghosts of your past, you might as well not even exist as far as the world is concerned. That wall of people he appreciates? They contributed!”

She took a deep breath and looked down, reigning herself in. When she looked up and met my eyes I could tell she wasn’t taking me seriously and more justifications and advice belittling my concerns were imminent.

Tears of frustration began to build and I held them back while I made one last plea “Just remind him it’s not always about making the music, remind him to stop and enjoy it, to dance to it”.

When I was sure she’d heard me clearly, I closed the laptop and disconnected the call.

I went straight to my room and packed up my things, including the cherished cocobolo guitar he’d given me. I carried my birth father’s books upstairs, my recording from earlier echoing down the halls while Adam layered in a percussion track.

I slipped into his room and laid the books on his table, turning my picture on his mantle around before I headed for the door. I gave the wall one last look and realized the playback had stopped; he was finished and would be looking for me soon.

I made my way into the recording area, Adam was plucking at his lute, reluctant to meet my eyes. The tv was playing quietly in the background but there was a solitary sadness to his melody that called to me. My lute was laying nearby on the sofa, and I picked it up to join in one last time.

We started off in perfect sync, but as we progressed and he still hadn’t turned to acknowledge me, something about the set of his shoulders began to eat at me, an echo of the Adam I’d first met and I found myself dropping in and out, almost pleading against his relentless disheartened melody until the music took on the tone of a beseeching argument.

Eventually I dropped out and Adam paused a moment before that sad solitary solo plodded on for a few more measures. When he finished he reached over and shut off the reel-to-reel, still without looking at me. I hadn’t realized he was recording and watched him remove the tape and scrawl over the label. When he finally turned to me his eyes were dark with emotion, his clenched jaw telling me he already knew what I was planning.

He laid the tape on the table and paused significantly, long fingers tracing over the label while I read ‘Our hearts condemn us’. I barely had time to register the significance before his mouth was on mine.

There was a forcefulness to his hands that belied the tenderness of his lips as he pulled me to him, a fearsome intensity in his eyes and movements at odds with the lingering relishing quality of his kisses. Part of me wanted to hold myself apart, to make the separation easier. Part of me wanted to meld into him and never come up for air, never face the outside world again.

My instinctual response to him was winning out, making me pliant in his hands as he lifted me. His lips drifted to my ear and down my neck as he laid me down and I was still lost in a sensory haze until I felt his teeth scrape over my neck, hard enough to jar me to my senses. The scratches making me question whether his fangs were bared.

My hands were pinned to the bed under his large ones, supine over my head while his lips continued down over my throat. I resisted, tugged my arm until he released it, then quickly swiped my fingers over my throat and looked at them, fully expecting to see blood on my fingertips, but they were bare. It was then I realized I was in his bed.

His eyes were dark with desire but also wounded at my blatant display of distrust. “I’m sorry Adam… I just” he silenced me with his lips, accepting without needing an explanation. I struggled with wanting to give in and feeling like an intruder here. When I tried to sit up, he shoved me back down, pinning my wrists above my head again and stretching out on top of me, his gaze predatory over me as he spoke in a low voice that brooked no arguments “This is not a marriage bed Lilith, Eve’s never even laid eyes on it. This is my bed, and I’ll decide who I take in it”.

He held my eyes for one long pointed moment until he felt my surrender, and then returned his lips to my throat, his mouth hot and tender on the sensitive skin. I caved completely, giving in to the need to know every inch of him completely, one last time.

Clothing was stripped off in a rush of impatience before we teased each other gently, slowly, reverently. Each memorizing every touch, scent, sound of the other, spending long moments just sitting back and visually taking in each other.

His fingers played me with the expert proficiency of one used to carelessly teasing a perfect melody from intricate strings. When he had me gasping his name into his mouth he moved to join me.

 He laid his weight almost completely on me, using his hands to brace him when necessary, or running them through my hair while he kissed me breathless. He buried himself to the hilt, resting the root of himself, right up to his pubic bone, against my tormented nub. Then he began a rhythmic rocking that made me wrap my legs around the back of his thighs.

He rocked into me with every thrust without ever lessoning the connection between us, the deep contact of our slow swaying keeping us in constant and full contact until I felt my climax building and I arched my back in a futile attempt to seek more of him, to go beyond the temporary, to capture this forever.

His breathing was labored as he began to speak to me in his low sensual voice, the importance and sincerity of his words forever imprinted on me “This little death… this heaven, is the only one I’ll know, and yet you bring me back to life everyday Lilith”.

Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes as I suddenly understood. What he had been for me, every soul igniting touch and every enrapturing note, I had been for him all along. While he was a force of nature that consumed me with every encounter, I’d immersed him in the aura of life, the facets of time in every city he’d loved and lost. Every dark hard edge of Detroit, every fiery pulsing moment of life in Tangier, every electrifying romantic encounter of Paris, and even the longing familiarity of home in London and any of a million more places I hadn’t learned about.

I didn’t climax so much as I shattered, irrevocably ruined in his arms while he clung to me and I brought about his own devastating release. We remained like that, holding each other tightly until our breathing calmed, and even a while longer.

Eventually my eyes landed on the wall of portraits, my own picture among them, turned so my face was no longer visible. Their eyes seemed to call out to me, reminding me that I could not stay. That this was not my place, that I would bring ruin upon him or a curse upon myself.

A conciliatory sighed heavily left my lungs “I was dreaming so regally, Lonesome on my trail, I was breathing in my life so deeply, And all the air was stale” It was a lyric from Miller’s ‘Someone Call an Angel Down’ and I felt Adam’s spent form stiffen with the implication before he withdrew. After a moment he turned his face to mine, futile hope still written there.

I ran a hand over that carven cheek, pleading with those vulnerable eyes for understanding “If I don’t show my face, you won’t have any pull with Watson and he’ll take advantage of you, plus you’ll have the police and Randy poking around here”.

Adam swung his legs around and off the bed, pacing the room, a lock of hair twisting agitatedly between his fingers while I sat up and continued “I’m going to go to the police and let them know I’m alive and well. I’m going to find Randy and tell him I’ve been in London as planned. That I spiked their beers the last time they saw me. That they hallucinated everything, and then I’m going to give them a bullshit ‘tip’ on Ian’s buyer that leads them to Scott”. It was a moment before I could bring myself to add “Then I’m going to fly to London and see where life takes me from there”.

Adam stopped pacing, his hair still twisted in his frozen hand, and pinned me with a questioning look “Why not come back here?”

My matter-of-fact explanation took an ugly turn here, and I voiced my logic with soft reluctance “And wait for Ava to show up? Or not?” There was a heavy silence full of unsaid things about an untenable future for a mortal and an immortal.

I rescued him from trying to defend that point again “Besides, they’ll follow me Adam. They’ll be pissed I duped them and they’ll follow me to check it out”. In an effort to reassure myself as much as him I added “They probably don’t even remember which house it was, but you need to lay low for a few days, I doubt they have an attention span for more than that. As long as everyone knows I’m alive and well in London, Watson will keep his mouth shut and they’ll forget all about what happened on your porch and you’ll be safe. We both will”.

He climbed back on the bed beside me, that feverish fire in his eyes was beginning to sputter as he leaned in for another touch, sliding his thumb up my jawline and into my hair “I could go with you?”

It was a last desperate attempt at a solution, and even he had trouble selling it. I grasped his chin between my thumb and forefinger “Where am I going to find you another supplier along the way? How is that keeping you safe Adam?”

Before he could make another argument to turn me I added “The only poster children I know for immortality haven’t exactly made it attractive to me. Ava is a rabid brat, Eve is detached to the point that the world’s chaos is something she thrives on, she wants to just watch it all play out. And you want to protect it, you want to fix it, and you can’t because you’re stuck lurking on the edges to protect yourself”. My frustration burned in my eyes, and I watched the exact moment of his capitulation in his.

He pulled me into his arms and we lay wordlessly together until an hour before dawn. At some invisible signal we both rose, dressed, and he carried my things to the car, pressing a wad of thousands of dollars into my hand as he held the car door open for me.

Instead of climbing in, I turned into his arms and he enveloped me in his embrace. The lightening sky the only impetus that could convince us to let go and climb into the car.

We still didn’t speak as he drove me to the nearest bus station, but I cradled his leather clad hand in my lap, fingers interlaced while he drove. We reached the small bus depot and he put the car in park, but didn’t release my hand.

I wanted him back home before it got too close to dawn, and I searched for the words to let him go. “Watch out for Ian, will you? He’s a good guy”. Adam sat pensively running his finger over his lips and staring ahead, but he nodded.

“You already made me immortal in the best way Adam” I released his hand to touch his heart “right here forever. But if you want more than a memory, you need to find Eve. She’s the one who can give you eternity, Adam, I can’t. My hourglass still has sand in it, and I’m going to spend it while I can”.

While I still had my resolve I quickly grabbed my bag and climbed out of the jag for the last time, circling around to his open window to lean in and kiss him goodbye, he pressed his lips hard to mine for a moment, his fingers grasping my hair to hold me there, his breath sucked in as uneven huffs until his kisses gentled and we made an effort to pull apart. I traced his face with my fingers memorizing the chiseled angles and soulful eyes one last time while he affectionately tucked my hair behind my ear.

Just before I headed for the waiting bus, in an attempt to reassure myself as much as him, I added “You’ll see this daemon again. When the world finally ends, I’ll be a mote of dust dancing for you in the last of the sunlight, by then you and Eve will be the only lovers left alive”.


	10. Leave the Demons in the Dust - Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam’s reclusive vampiric existence is disturbed by a woman who needs his help, she turns out to be more than he expected. A ‘zombie’ he can’t apply the designation to… an equal he can’t resist.  
> Chapter 10: Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place AFTER the events of OLLA

I was walking along the narrow road, following the deserted streets back to my rooms not far from the café. Yasmin had added the song we’d written into her repertoire. Tonight was the first time she was performing it and she’d asked me to attend.

I’d been as predictably enraptured by her performance as everyone else in the café, but Hal held a special significance for me. I’d been reveling in the city, drinking in the experience, learning everything I could. But Hal was the first thing I’d done here that had been really personal for me. I’d written it about Eve and Adam, inspired by her declamation “I have no solution”.

I thought of Adam all the time. I expected my memories of him to take on the faraway feel of daydreams, but that surreal period of my life was still intensely clear.  I missed him terribly, and felt traces of him everywhere I went, heard him in every note I played. I accepted this with tender resolution; I’d known when I left I would carry him with me indefinitely.

My dreams of Adam had finally stopped several weeks ago, ironically around the same time I’d left Chaouen for Tangier. I’d been there to visit my father’s grave and then come up to Tangier on a whim, hoping to meet Marlow, maybe resolve the connection that still plagued me. I’d had no luck finding him or Eve. I hoped that meant she was with Adam.

After weeks of peaceful sleep, I’d dreamt about Adam again the last few nights. Dreams that had me on edge, that had inspired my writing sessions with Yasmin, that had me looking over my shoulder more than usual.

I was huddled up and guarded as I walked the narrow road, too late for the peddlers to hound me with their promises to be helpful guides and trick me into browsing the magical ‘spice’ shops of the hashish belt. Usually a brief statement that I lived here was enough to dissuade them but it didn’t reduce the shear enormity of initial offers.

The uneven stone streets were dark and relatively abandoned at this hour, but the chalky reflective glow of the stones and buildings made it an easy walk. A polite voice issued an ‘excuse me’ in French nearby and something familiar about it caught my attention, slowing my step. A gasp followed, from a bench on the embankment rising beside me. Nagging curiosity turned into full blown shock, rooting me to the spot as I recognized the familiar figures. Their behavior had me rapidly lurching toward them in horror.

“NO!” The command was out of my mouth and echoing along the street before I knew what I was doing. Two heads, one light one dark, rose in unison at the sound of my voice. Eyes darkened nearly to black, teeth bared, their surprise lasting just long enough for the necking couple to flee.

I called after their hasty retreat that it was just a joke, hoping my startled attempt at Darija wasn’t too disjointed to be understood. Then I turned back around to find two very hungry vampires, whom I’d just deprived of their feast, now focused solely on me.

They had to be in dire straits to be out so close to dawn, in public, and attempting an attack. Adam was in a worse state then I’d ever seen him before. Eve was just as bad off.

Seeing graceful genteel Eve with her fangs beautifully bared was terrifying, so I focused on what I knew, I focused on Adam. They were panting for breath, ashen skinned and barely able to stay on their feet. They’d had no blood for some time.

I took a retreating step at the blank hunger in their eyes. “I thought you were above this”.

Eve took a step forward, wheezing “Civilities ran out when the flask did”.

I threw up my hands in front of me “I can get you blood!” the statement had come out as a panicked plea, but it halted her stalking progress.  “Come with me”.

We weren’t far from the clinic I was working at. I’d gotten certified in London, and taken a position here to earn some money before moving on. Part of me was hoping to locate Marlow and Eve this way. Then the outbreak began and I stayed a bit longer, telling myself the clinic needed me, but really hoping I could somehow protect Eve and Marlow. I’d grown more concerned when there were whispers that someone had been illegally selling blood, a French doctor at the hospital was said to have been taken into custody.

I ran to the clinic while they staggered along behind me. I was already inside before they made it to the building and nearly collapsed against the outside wall, trying to lean nonchalantly against it so they didn’t draw attention in the deserted streets.

I retrieved the only bag of blood that I’d managed to set aside after it had been deemed safe, feeling horribly guilty as I handed it to Eve, though I’d reserved it with her in mind. She began to devour it immediately while I approached Adam. He looked at my hands expectantly and found only my switchblade and bandages. I met his eyes, willing him not to let me down in his haze “I’m trusting you Adam”

Reluctance mixed with desperation in his eyes as he watched me put the blade to a vein. He lifted his hands to stop me, but as soon as crimson welled up on my skin he descended on it ravenously, powerless against his hunger. His lips were cold but he was considerately careful to restrain his teeth from tearing into my skin.

He held me close while he drank, tucked against his side, my face huddled against his neck. I watched Eve from the corner of my eye, and began to worry when she had drained the bag and Adam continued to drink.

She sat and enjoyed her blood rush for a few minutes, and still Adam drank. I’d snuggled into his embrace, enjoying the feel of him again, ignoring the gradual drop in my blood pressure. He was latched onto me so tightly there was no need to worry about keeping my feet.

Eve’s hand suddenly rested on my arm and his as she spoke gently, but with a gravity that pulled us both from our revere “Adam darling, if you don’t stop soon you’re going to have to turn her”.

He released me immediately. Blood tricked down my arm for a second before I clumsily bound it with the pressure bandage I’d brought.

 I looked up to find them both watching me with rapt attention. Everything began to look a bit woozy.

“How where you able to get into this place” Eve’s voice was urgent but not unkind.

“I work here. The money Adam gave me ran out a few weeks ago.” Suddenly dizzy, I staggered and Adam pulled me back against him, his eyes devouring the site of me before tucking me against him to keep me upright.

They had both regained some semblance of their former appearance of health, but I knew she was thinking ahead. Where they would get their next score? Eve was a survivor.

“Why aren’t you in Detroit?” My words slurred slightly as I gazed up at Adam in confusion, wanting to drink in the site of his beloved face, but too befuddled to do so effectively.

He grimaced and smoothed my hair, answering reluctantly “Ava did come”.

I gulped “What for? I left.” I saw Eve shift, uncomfortable both with the topic and the familiarity between us.

I registered Adam’s sudden tensing against me and their agitation took my brain to the next logical jump. “Ian?”

He said nothing but kissed my forehead and tucked me under his chin. Tears welled in my eyes, tears of sadness, exhaustion, and frustration.

Adam’s arms wrapped around me while I fell into darkness and I heard Eve’s voice echoing through my head as the tunnel before my eyes began to close “bring her back to my place”.


	11. Epilogue 2.0

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There were some requests to extend the epilogue and know what happens to Lilith, and here it is.

When I began to come out of the darkness, the first thing I became aware of was the unnaturally fast cadence of my heart, the nagging sting in my wrist reminding me why. I focused on the rhythm, faster than normal, but not weak or thready. Other than thirst and a vague sensation that the room was spinning, I felt no other symptoms and figured I’d fainted from the sudden drop in blood pressure.

Lowered voices echoed into the room. I didn’t recognize the first voice until Adam’s familiar one responded. He and Eve seemed to be having an argument. Cracking my eyes open revealed a gauzy white lace canopy above me, and I turned my head to look around and orient myself.

Books. Piles of books. Everywhere. It smelled like a library. Obviously we were at Eve’s place. I felt a little sluggish and was sure sitting up would be accompanied by a massive dizzy spell so I decided to lay there a little while longer.

“There’s nothing we can do, it’s already light out!” Eve’s usual patience seemed to be wearing thin.

“What if she needs a transfusion?” The tone of Adam’s raised voice explained Eve’s irritation.

“We don’t even know if the hospital can help her right now”. She reined in the frustration and stated with complete rationality “If you’re that worried than turn her”.

“She doesn’t want that”.

“It’s been months since you’ve seen her Adam, a lot may have happened. She might feel differently now, especially if her choices have been limited”.

That response hit a little too close to home and I decided it was time to seek them out and end the discussion. I’d just lifted my head when I heard Adam’s heavy boots hurrying towards me “Lilith?” He sounded so relieved until I reached a sitting position and the full force of the vertigo hit, making me falter, and he ordered “Take it easy!”

It worsened for a minute as the bed dipped under his weight, then suddenly his shoulder was there to lay my head on, his arms were around me to lean into, and I did, clinging to him like an anchor. He stroked my hair, and his solid support made the dizziness pass.

I held on a little longer than necessary, breathing him in, my fingers remembering the feel of precious form and muscles they’d yearned to touch for months. I pulled back, remembering Eve, and caught sight of the rampant concern for me in his eyes.

Those eyes, I missed those eyes so badly. He was taking me in every bit as much as I was him and I felt his gaze like a physical touch until Eve appeared behind him “Are you alright?”

“Just a little dizzy” I took an assessing look at Eve’s eyes, trying to gauge how much time had passed. They were still blue like Adam’s, so the pint I’d given them was holding for now. “What happened to your supply?”

Her face fell and Adam spoke softly near my ear “Marlow’s gone”.

My eyes flew wide for a moment in shock before I made an effort to compose myself for Eve’s sake. I whispered to Adam “Blood poisoning?” He nodded and I couldn’t help but worry that he would share the same fate here without a reliable supplier.

I closed my eyes and deflated “None of this would have happened if I’d stayed in Detroit”

Adam took my chin in his fingers and made me look at him again “If you had, Eve would have still been here. She would have shared Marlow’s fate. You’re the reason she’s still alive”. His fingers ran tenderly up my jaw and into my hair before he kissed my forehead adoringly.

My self-consciousness about having Eve around was unsettling and I pulled away from Adam’s innocently intended touch. His brow furrowed for a moment, before he twitched his eyes back to her and squeezed my hand in understanding, then let me slide my fingers out of his. “I’m so sorry for your loss Eve”.

She attempted a brave smile before turning her head down to contemplate the floor and wrestle with her grief.

After a moment of silence I changed the subject “How much money do you have?” a guilty look was exchanged and my stomach dropped, that limited the options significantly.

“I need to go”. They both turned startled faces back to me and Adam stiffened like he’d been snubbed as I slid off the bed, so I clarified “I need to go into work”. I stopped in the doorway and turned back to Eve, the sudden motion aggravating my remaining vertigo and making me feel as if the turn was continuing far longer than it did “Where am I”.

Eve stepped forward, concerned “Lilith, perhaps you should lie down again? You seem a little disoriented”.

I closed my eyes and rubbed the bridge of my nose till it passed “No, I’m fine... I’ll be fine. I mean where is your apartment? How far am I from the clinic?”

I was clearly puzzling her, but she answered succinctly “Three streets west and two south”.

“Right, meet me outside the clinic at ten” I gestured to their suitcases “Bring those, empty”. I hurried out the doorway, clinging to the railing to keep my feet steady on the narrow steps.

By the time I reached the café near the clinic the dizziness was mostly gone. I downed water and eggs before heading over to the clinic, where I was greeted with surprised gasps at how pale and ill I looked. It took some convincing to get them to let me work rather than go home and lie down.

Possibly setting myself up for consequences later, I managed to set aside a few weeks’ worth of supply for Adam and Eve throughout the day, marking approved units as rejected and storing them in an empty case in an overflow storage room. There were hardly any O-negatives, but beggars couldn’t be choosers at this point. When comments were made that there was a surprising lack of stock today, I was quick to remind them of the worsening situation at the hospital, and they nodded their heads in sage acceptance.

After a hearty lunch to keep me going, I worked later than anyone else, assuring them I would close up. After they’d all gone I changed the bandage on my wrist, a precaution since it was already scabbed over and healing well, then fell asleep in a chair near the locked door. I woke with a crick in my neck and realized there was a gentle tapping coming from the door. My body protested as I hurried over, hoping they hadn’t been there long. They already drew enough attention, standing at the door of a closed clinic with suitcases was bound to be noticed.

I hurriedly unlocked the door and pulled them inside before relocking it, noting their eyes were darkening already as their startled faces passed me. I looked out the glass to see if anyone noticed, but the streets were deserted.

Anxious to get this over with, I turned and ordered “come with me” than headed for the overflow room. It wasn’t normally locked, the key was different from the rest and a hassle to fool with, but I’d taken the precaution of locking it today, and keeping the key with me.

Once I had it open I waved them inside and followed. They were staring at the case hungrily, but still looked over at me for an explanation, their faces innocently puzzled. “Suitcases” I waved at the floor in front of the case, exhaustion making me terse. Eve bent down and laid hers open eagerly, Adam mimicked her a little more reservedly “Are you sure you want to do this?”

I opened the case and bent down to retrieve the unit bags, slinging them into the suitcases “There are no acceptable alternatives”. The corner of his mouth drew up the tiniest bit at this.

“What is it you do here” Eve asked curiously.

“I’m an Sbb, specialist in blood bank technology. I perform the typing and screening and supervise the handling of the donations”. Adam’s eyebrows rose, impressed, his eyes were inquiring “I took classes and got certified in London a few months ago”.

When I finished I locked up behind us and replaced the key before following them out into the night. We staggered back to Eve’s place where she and Adam fed while I arranged the units into the small cooler that usually held her much smaller supply.

I was barely able to stay on my feet when I finished, but they were rejuvenated by the feeding. I sat for a moment on an empty suitcase, practically dozing when Eve approached me, taking my chin in her hand to smile at me with a kind of maternal pride, stroking a thumb back and forth in unspoken appreciation for pulling them out of dire straits.

Warm as her gratitude was, there was a heavy sadness in her eyes now. It hadn’t been there when I’d spoken to her from Detroit, it wasn’t in the photos I’d seen of her, but now, it seemed permanent. I wondered just how long she would morn Marlow, and had a feeling it would be for centuries.

She walked back to the doorway and began to put her gloves on again, turning to address Adam and I both through that veil of sadness “I’m going to go check on Bilal” and with that she disappeared down the stairs.

There was a long deep silence throughout the room after she left. My eyes scanned over the stacks of books, eventually landing on a jumbled pile of items so out of place that it could only be the contents of Adam’s suitcase. A small neat stack of his tapes were standing next to it.

“Where are you keeping all your instruments?” my voice seemed to echo unnaturally as I broke the silence. Adam looked back at me, and then away again with a hang dog expression that made my gut clench in protest.

“I left it all behind” his eyes drifted to the pile “that’s all I’ve got now”.

I blinked with astonishment “You just walked away?”

Adam ran his finger over his lips “I had to. Ian went out with Eve, Ava, and I the night she killed him, a club full of people saw us with him. Then that fucking zombie Randy showed up at my door again”. The brief flare of irritation faded as he forlornly added “Eve was afraid the police would come”.

I took a deep breath to steady myself, every fear I’d had about the limitations of their curse now brought into stark relief. “So you fled Detroit with nothing and nearly got yourselves killed?”

Adam looked down, and I realized it hadn’t been his plan. “Right. Well...” I stood up and extended my hand “give me the keys to the house”.

He pulled them from the pile “and what are you going to do with these?”

I turned and started for the doorway “I’m getting on a flight to Detroit to sort it out”.

He was behind me in a flash, his arms wrapped around my waist and pulling me tight against him. The hard muscles of his chest pressed into my back. I whispered adamantly “Don’t tell me I can’t go. I have to”. His lips were at my ear and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to deny the rapturous way my body responded to his nearness.

“I won’t, but I can’t let you go again without setting a few things in order” his nuzzle at the side of my neck made me turn into the contact, and he captured my lips eagerly, kissing them the way I’d dreamed of for months. I turned in his arms, wrapping mine around him and pulling him in closer. I kissed him till I was breathless, my lips swollen and chafing deliciously.

When it was over he smiled at me, that rare bright smile I’d missed so much since I’d left. He never smiled in my dreams.

Wildly unsure of where I stood in the situation, I reminded him “The quicker I handle it, the better”.

He nodded and released me to put on his gloves, then scratched out a quick note to Eve ‘gone to bank’.

I paid for a cab ride to one of the poshest banks in Tangier. Adam approached a small elegant intercom mounted outside the closed doors and pushed a button. A clear professional voice answered and after conversing in French and giving a cryptic alias there was a long pause. A few minutes later a small side door opened, and a man in an expensive suit waved us in.

The man was used to pandering to the elite, and I waited in the glamorous vestibule while some clandestine transaction took place between he and Adam.

When Adam reappeared, looking strikingly at ease despite his unusually casual dress for such a setting, he pressed a massive wad of cash into my hand and pocketed a smaller one. “They’re wiring it in from an offshore account and gave me an advance”. After I picked up my jaw from the floor I stuffed the cash into my pocket and followed him back to the cab.

I called the head of the clinic and informed him I would be away for a few days while the cabbie drove us to the flat I shared with three other women. They were all out for the evening when I scooped up my passport, and a few toiletries. At the last minute I decided to go ahead and grab all the rest of my meager belongings and my guitar, intending to send it back with Adam for now.

I left my roommates a note then climbed back into the cab and we set out for the airport. I managed to catch a midnight flight, but it made for a brief goodbye. Only enough time to hand him my new mobile number and manage one brief kiss and an “I’ll be back as fast as I can”.

It seemed unfair to have to walk away from him again so soon.

After two lay overs I arrived in Detroit the next evening and went straight to a rental car agency, within twenty minutes I was on my way. I stopped and filled the van with packing supplies and some food before heading to the house. When I arrived I was happily surprised to find it untouched.

I opened the door and walked straight into the smell, sights, and sounds of memories that had haunted me for months. A whole world lived within these walls. A lifetime with Adam that had been all our own.

I walked through the silent rooms of reminiscence, and nearly fell asleep on the bed before a siren in the distance reminded me that I needed to get moving. I put on some of the music Adam had left behind and went to work. By morning I had a third of the house packed or sorted into refuse piles. I started with things that were irreplaceable, his pictures, music, and instruments. Then moved on to the recording equipment and furniture.

It was rough going, so many memories, so many insights, it made it impossible to not constantly think of him with Eve and worry over what the hell I would be going back to Tangier for. It hurt too much to consider not going back at all.

Two days later I had a storage container parked out front and three burly men loading it up. They’d been paid extra to come inconspicuously in the wee hours and keep their mouth shut about the transaction. The storage container would be stowed in a climate controlled warehouse until Adam decided to reclaim it. A deal that had taken nearly all the money he’d given me and left me just enough for the flight back.

I’d called him on Eve’s phone a couple times to let him know I was okay. They were brief calls, I was exhausted and he mentioned he and Eve had been working hard on something for when I got back. Now it was time to go find out what that was, and find them a reliable supplier, before I said goodbye again.

Before I left I gathered the refuse over the disassembled radiant energy motor, and torched it. It was daylight out so I watched it for a few minutes before I was sure the smoke would attract attention. I passed back through the house, now as empty and anonymous as any other on the block except for the odd wiring that I couldn’t do anything about.

Odd that I was walking away from a house I once thought I’d never lay eyes on again. This time my goodbye was unmistakably permanent.

I was relieved when a fire truck passed me just a few streets away, speeding off in the direction of the smoke, reassuring me the house wouldn’t burn along with the Adam’s secrets.

I caught the morning flight back to Tangier and fell so deeply asleep I nearly missed the connections. By the time I arrived I was nearly sick with exhaustion.

I looked around for a cab, already inundated by the touts offers to ‘help’ me, and was about to tell them to fuck off when they suddenly backed off all on their own. I looked around to discover Adam had appeared at my side.

He slipped my bag from my fingers and wrapped an arm around me. I nearly collapsed into him and let him lead me to a cab he had waiting.

Once inside he pulled me to him and wrapped me in his arms. It was the only place I wanted to be in the world, I wanted to curl up in his arms and sleep for days. Instead I resisted.

He smiled knowingly and planted a kiss on me that had all the opposition in my muscles fading rapidly. By the time he was done I collapsed helplessly against him and tucked my face into the hollow between his neck and shoulder. “Lilith, we need to talk”.

I shook my head, it wasn’t a conversation I had the strength for.

He chuckled, making me look up at him and frown disapprovingly. He continued to smile “You gave me an idea”.

Just then the cab stopped and I looked around in confusion as Adam paid the driver and climbed out. We weren’t at Eve’s place, or my former flat. Just a small anonymous house next to the music café where I hung out, not far from the clinic.

He smiled back at me again as he took my hand and led me inside. As soon as the door shut behind us he dropped my bag and pulled me into his arms “I bought the clinic. Bilal helped make the arrangements. We’re focusing it as a private blood bank and will pay for donations. We’re going to set up a few more all around the world and skim a little off the top, so to speak. We won’t ever have to look for suppliers again”.

I stared at him for a moment, incredulous, and he teased “I’ve sunk most of my money into it for the moment, so you’re going to have to get back to making music if you’re going to support us”.

My tired brain was having difficulty with the enormity of it “Are you fucking kidding me?”

He continued to grin “well at least until I consolidate the accounts where I’ve stashed long term royalties and sort out my old investments”.

I made a face at his deliberate misinterpretation and he grinned again, taking my hand and pulling me further into the small house “This is just temporary until we’re established and can then we can decide where we want to go next”.

I was looking around, shell-shocked, when a particular word struck me “We?”

He backed up to the four poster bed, his eyes darkening in an all too familiar way that made my heart speed up and I forgot my exhaustion as his hands ran over my hips and pulled me with him, his smile relishing the clarification he was about to give “You and I”.

I peeked up at him, afraid to hope.

“Eve’s gone to open another clinic in London with Bilal, she wanted some time to show him their old haunts and honor Marlow’s memory, encourage Bilal’s writing. See where things take her for a while, the worlds changed a bit since she moored herself here for Marlow. Time to turn over the hourglass”.

He watched me intently, waiting for me to process this. My response was to give myself over to an restrained kiss, knocking him backwards so that we both fell into the bed. We didn’t leave it for quite some time.

 


End file.
